Friends to Lovers to Complete and Utter Idiots
by Team Damon
Summary: They're just friends. The best of friends, really. But when she's secretly head over heels in love with him and he gets the bright idea to take their friendship to an entirely new and unexpected level, she knows she's playing with fire. She's already burning, though, so why not make it count?. Modern AU, Bucky/OC, three parts.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: *waves excitedly* Soooo hello and welcome to another one of my random and shameless AUs of a couple that I have literally written to death, Bucky and Summer :D as long as you guys keep reading them I'll keep writing them, and this one is probably by far the most fun one that I've written :D The idea for this came about as a way to celebrate my monster fic Life After Death hitting the 1,000 mark for reviews, and while it's currently about 50 reviews shy of that, I lack the will or the patience to hold off on starting to post it, so here we are :) BUT impatience aside, I do mean this story as a giant thank you to the lovely readers and followers and reviewers who have stuck with me for so long and read Life After Death through all the ups and downs and horrible cliffhangers and other pain and suffering I've inflicted lol. I hope you guys enjoy this and if you are reading this and haven't read LAD, my thanks to you as well and you definitely don't need to read anything else of mine to (hopefully) enjoy this :)**

 **This story is mostly already finished and will be three chapters long, so updates won't take very long. My huge and undying thanks to midnightwings96 for helping me plot and flesh this idea out when I started aimlessly rambling about it a couple weeks ago, and also for being amazing and encouraging and absolutely irreplaceable :) I look forward to hearing what you guys think, and I'll see you all soon :D**

It was a good night. It had been a good week and even better month, and Summer was actually pretty damn happy for the first time in a _long_ time.

She was, at the age of 26, an event planner for one of the biggest corporations in New York and the entire country. She had a circle of friends that she loved, one of which she was in the middle of throwing a party for at her place to celebrate a promotion they had just gotten, and while the party was small, she was having a blast. Laughter was in the air and a decent amount of alcohol was flowing, and it was nights like these that made her thank the heavens above that she'd taken a chance and moved to New York on little more than a hope and a prayer several years earlier.

Of course, that didn't mean those same friends that she loved and cherished couldn't also be annoying as hell, especially once they were congregated together and had a couple of drinks in them during a party.

"You know what I think I might like _best_ about tonight?" Natasha asked, drink in hand as she lounged on the couch next to Summer. She glanced at her friend and then added with a small smile, " _Marcus_ isn't here."

Summer rolled her eyes and ignored the responding laughs of the others in the room. "Do you _have_ to bring him up?"

"Well, we did have to tolerate him for your sake for six _very_ painful months," came the smooth and British accented voice of Peggy, sitting across from Summer on another couch. She was perched on her husband's lap to make more sitting room for others, and from the way that he was blushing, it was hard to believe that they had been married for three years already.

"Very painful," Steve agreed from underneath his wife.

"See?" Peggy gestured. "Even he couldn't stand him, and Steve is nice to _everyone_."

"Yeah, I know, he was a colossal jerk. Don't remind me," Summer chuckled with her hands up, all too eager to forget the rather steep lowering of her standards that had led to that relationship in the first place. She had definitely learned her lesson, however.

"Who's a colossal jerk?"

And just like that, with a handful of causally spoken words, Summer felt the familiar rush of her breath leaving her lungs and nervous flutters swimming through her belly as the couch depressed next to her. Just like she had long trained herself to do, however, she shoved those feelings away and then made a silly and falsely angry face when her _other_ friend, Bucky - her _best_ friend, if she was being honest - nudged her legs with his foot and told her to scoot as he sat next to her.

"Marcus, of course," Natasha answered for Summer, and as soon as the words left her mouth, Bucky groaned loudly and almost spit out the mouthful of beer he'd just sucked out of the bottle in his hand.

"Ugh, that fucking loser," he immediately grumbled, pushing back a lock of short hair that had fallen into his face while Summer pretended not to watch. "Do we really have to talk about him?"

"No!" Summer exclaimed. "Nat brought him up, I didn't. I'd be happy to never hear his stupid name again."

"I still can't believe how easily he let you go," Peggy mused, shifting slightly in Steve's lap, which made him clear his throat and look away.

"Actually," Natasha shrugged, "it makes sense. I still think he was gay and just hadn't come to terms with it yet."

Summer sunk against the couch and let out a deep breath of despair. "Here we go."

"Gay? He wasn't gay, he was just an idiot. Calling him gay's an insult to gay people," Bucky opined. His knee was pressed against Summer's, and it wasn't his fault - space on the couch was scarce, and he wasn't exactly a small man. "Why d'you say he's gay?"

"Nat, if you answer that, I will kill you," Summer said, glaring daggers at her troublemaker of a friend.

"I'm just saying," Natasha shrugged, "any _normal_ straight man would never have refused to -"

Summer grabbed a pillow and threw it at Natasha, screeching, " _Shut the frick up_!"

But it was too late. Everyone in the room's ears perked up, and Bucky was the first to furrow his brows and say, "Refused to what?"

"Yes, refused to _what_?" Peggy asked next, letting Steve shift her down to a newly vacated spot on the couch next to him, so that her occasional squirming could no longer pleasantly torture him.

"Nothing!" Summer yelled, face red and her very soul on fire as she tried desperately hard to make everyone just drop it. "Seriously, it's nothing and Natasha, I mean it, I will not speak to you for a month if you say another word."

Natasha smirked and relented, leaning back against the couch and keeping her mouth shut. Unfortunately, her newfound silence did nothing to help Summer.

"You _did_ sleep together, yes?" Peggy asked.

"Oh my God, _yes_ ," Summer groaned.

"Then what wouldn't he do?" Peggy pressed on.

"This is why you work for the government, isn't it?" Summer retorted. "You never let anything go."

Peggy merely grinned proudly and replied, "I believe stubborn is the word you're looking for, and _yes_."

"Just tell us," Bucky said. "You know she's not gonna let it go until you spill."

Summer glared at him in reply and then snatched the beer out of his hand, taking a healthy chug of it before shoving it back into his hand. "No."

"Darling," Peggy sighed, "you're surrounded by two highly trained government operatives," she motioned to herself and Steve, "an ex-Army sergeant who could charm a serial killer into confessing their crimes to police," she pointed to Bucky who winked and grinned in agreement, "and then Natasha, who despite being a tiny Russian ballet instructor could _probably_ kill a man with her pinky finger."

"It's true, I've done it," Natasha teased.

"My point is, we're going to find out one way or another."

Summer looked at Steve, who shook his head and smiled with deep sympathy. "Sorry. Don't think I'm gonna be much help on this one."

"Just... suffice it to say that _Marcus_ ," Natasha said, ripping the bandaid off for Summer's sake, "was not a fan of... how should I say it..."

Summer grabbed the pillow she'd flung at Natasha and covered her face with it instead. Bucky chuckled and patted her knee. She smacked his hand away.

"... Putting his money where his _mouth_ was."

Summer dropped the pillow and muttered, "Yep, not talking to you for a month."

Peggy gasped. Bucky stared in surprise and bewilderment. Steve made a face of discomfort like he really didn't want to hear about such acts in conjunction with one of his closest friends.

"Are you _serious_?" Peggy asked, looking scandalized.

"Definitely gay," Bucky declared. "And here I thought he was just an idiot. Poor guy."

"Well now that the mystery's been solved," Summer said pointedly, shooting Bucky a glare that he responded to with a maddening grin, "can we _please_ change the subject?"

"I surely hope that you didn't do for him what he wouldn't do for you," Peggy said, eyes still wide and now appearing equally concerned as she was shocked.

"Oh she did," Natasha replied before Summer could tackle her and make her shut up. "She likes _that_ enough to do it without getting it back."

An inhuman noise of despair ripped out of Summer's throat as she once again pummeled Natasha with the pillow, and unbeknownst to her, Bucky choked on his beer and turned a rather bright shade of red as Summer attempted to exact revenge on her blabbermouth friend.

"You suck! I'm never telling you anything again!" Summer said as she whacked Natasha's head with the dreadfully soft pillow, but despite her humiliation, she was laughing and so was Natasha. Bucky caught his breath while Peggy caught a case of the giggles herself, and all the while Steve simply shook his head like he was the one sane person in the midst of a chaotic zoo.

She was used to it. This was how plenty of parties and get-togethers went, and despite how annoying it was to have to deal with occasional soul-crushing humiliation, she wouldn't have changed a thing. Well, maybe a _few_ things, but she made it a point not to focus on _that_.

"Okay," she said, taking a breath and flipping her long black hair back behind her shoulder as she stood up from the couch, "if you'll all excuse me, I need to go drink away my embarrassment now. And find my dignity wherever Nat left it this time."

Natasha got up with her, offering to make her a drink as a bit of an apology, and as Summer walked past Bucky, he looked up at her and gave her a certain _look_ as he held his beer bottle to his lips. She rolled her eyes at him, ignoring the tiny flip of her stomach like she always did, smacking him lightly on the side of his head as she walked towards her kitchen.

She really did love her friends, even when they drove her nuts. She had met them all through Bucky, who ran a self defense class that she had signed up for within a week of arriving in New York a few years earlier. After being mugged within literally four days of living in the city, she had signed up for the first class that she came across, he taught her how to kick ass and look good while doing it, and that was how she met her current best friend.

She also happened to be quite deeply and painfully in love with him, but that was something that she didn't consider particularly relevant. He had never once asked her out on a date, and it was clear that he only viewed her in a strictly platonic light. She watched different ladies come into his life and leave as quickly as they arrived, none of them lasting and none of them caring for him even a fraction of the way that she did. Charming as he was, he was also a complicated and haunted man, having seen terrible things in his time serving overseas, and he bore both physical and mental scars that not many of his dates could seem to handle for very long. Eventually, this led to him adopting a cynical attitude and swearing off relationships for the most part, while Summer clung to the opposite perspective and tried hard to find a man worth spending her life with. It wasn't working out so well for her.

But, despite the constant ache in her heart that she had been carrying around ever since she let herself start wondering what it would be like to feel Bucky's lips on hers or how amazing it might be to get to wake up next to him every morning, she told herself that she was content. She had a great life, a great job, great friends, and specifically a great best friend in Bucky. He was there for her when she needed someone to rant to or distract her when everyday stress began to get to her, and she was there for him when nightmares would keep him up and he needed someone to talk to on the phone until he fell back asleep. He had taken care of her at her worst, when she came down with the flu like clockwork every winter and reverted to a pathetic needy child in need of chicken noodle soup, and she had taken care of him on more than once occasion when he tried to drink his demons away and ended up passed out on her living room floor.

They worked. She was lucky to have him, she really was. She wouldn't dare complain about being just friends with him, because how many people got to have a friend as amazing as him? He was sweet and caring and he'd go to the ends of the earth for her, and he had told her that more than once. He just didn't love her in quite the same way that she loved him.

And that was fine. _She_ was fine. Or at least that's what she told herself on an almost daily basis.

Over the course of the rest of the night, Summer enjoyed herself and managed to escape anymore embarrassing conversations, drinking more and laughing until her sides hurt. After midnight came and went, some of the others began to leave, and before she knew it, she was hugging Peggy and Steve goodbye and seeing Natasha off in a cab. A few other stragglers remained, but by the time that it was nearly two in the morning, all that remained was her, Bucky, and more trash and dishes than she could hardly stand to deal with.

"Go on home, Bucky," she told him, gathering up an armful of red plastic cups and hauling them to her trash can in the kitchen. "You don't have to help me pick up after everyone."

He made a slight scoffing sound and followed her, carrying his own armful of trash. "It's no problem. You shouldn't have to clean all this on your own, especially when you're the one who threw the party."

"Comes with the territory," she shrugged, laughing when he almost tripped over a pack of sodas on her kitchen floor. "You're drunk."

"No I'm not," he protested, depositing the trash in the bin and then gesturing to the sodas. "It's not my fault you leave your crap laying around for people to trip on it."

"Oh okay, sure," she chuckled, turning and heading back towards the living room. "Well, you should call a cab, unless you want to crash on my lovely couch."

He made a noncommittal noise, picking up what he was pretty sure were his own empty beer bottles as Summer stood and glared at the state of her apartment. Maybe she should just clean in the morning, when she wasn't tipsy or itching to crawl into bed.

"You know, I still can't believe the Marcus thing."

Summer froze and then closed her eyes briefly before glancing over her shoulder and pleading, "Can we please just forget that was ever said? Like, it was bad enough while I was still with him and had to deal with... _that_ , so..."

"Seriously though," he said, oblivious to her desire for silence, which was a common side effect of his mild intoxication that she was rather used to. "How did that even happen? Like how would it go? Would you like... _ask_ for it and then he'd go _oh no, ew, I don't do that, get it away from me_!"

Summer couldn't help but laugh at the higher pitch of Bucky's voice at the end of the sentence, even though her face flushed with new embarrassment as she headed back into the kitchen with a new stack of cups to throw away. Bucky walked close behind her. "No, not really. I mean... he just... didn't like doing it."

"Did he ever _try_?"

"Nope," she sighed, biting her lip and wishing that she could go back in time and put a muzzle on Natasha.

"And you stayed with him for six months?! _Summer_..."

They both dropped their trash into the can at the same time, and Summer sighed again at the almost scolding tone in his voice. She then put her hands on her hips, trying not to be too distracted by how good he looked in just a simple but _well fitted_ pair of jeans and a long sleeved dark blue shirt. A lock of his hair kept falling into his eyes, and it was hard to not reach out and brush it back for him. But she persevered.

"I was dumb, okay?" she shrugged. "We know I don't really know how to pick them. I suck."

"You don't suck." Then he paused and, as a grin began to curl across his lips, he said, "Well actually, according to Natasha, you do, but..."

Summer smacked him in the shoulder - a rather solid shoulder - and then walked past him. "I'm gonna kill her."

His chuckle followed her back out to the living room. Rather than continue cleaning up, she plopped down on the couch and let out a tired breath. Bucky sat down next to her, just a few inches between them, and he was apparently a curious soul that night.

"So you were with him for six months, and before that, you'd been single for what... seven?"

Summer nodded, closing her eyes and feeling the room swim just a little bit. It was pleasant, not nausea inducing like it would be if she was fully drunk. "Yup."

"... So how long's it been since you've actually had some decent sex?"

Her eyes popped open and she punched him in the arm. "Shut up! Oh my God, what is this, sexual interrogation night?"

He smiled and laughed, clutching his shoulder exaggeratedly. "I'm just curious, honestly. And it explains why you're always so wound up all the time."

She rolled her eyes and turned away from him. "Yeah, _that's_ it."

"Could be a part of it," he shrugged. "You know, everybody acts like guys need it more, but I think it's the opposite. Or maybe it's just the same, I don't know. _Everybody_ needs it."

"Well, I'm doing fine," she said, flashing him a fake smile, trying to let him know that she was _more_ than done with this particular topic.

"Yeah?" He grinned at her in a lopsided way that made her breath catch, and then he asked, "How many batteries you go through in a month?"

She smacked him again. "Oh my God! Leave me the frick alone!"

"I'm sorry!" he exclaimed through another fit of laughter, and she had to admit, she loved seeing him laugh. Even when it was at her expense. "It's just... you poor thing. You work so hard and do so much, and it's been at _least_ a year since you've had a guy go down on you, and that's just... it's a fucking travesty."

For _several_ reasons, one of which was merely hearing him say those words, Summer's brain briefly went blank and her face became the color of a perfectly ripe strawberry. She had no response, none of her usual snappy retorts, only... embarrassment and speechlessness. Bucky stared at her, waiting for a response, and when she did nothing but gape and then look away, his smile faded and sudden concern replaced his previously humorous expression.

"... Summer?"

She shook her head and refused to look him in the eye. "It's late. I should uh... I should probably -"

"You _have_... before." He blinked. "Right?"

 _This wasn't happening_. "Want me to call you a cab?"

Bucky's face was so full of shock, one might have thought that something truly terrible had just occurred. "Summer -"

"No, okay?" she suddenly snapped, wishing the ground beneath her would open her up and swallow her whole. "No, nobody's ever done that to me before, unless you count this one weirdo in college and I _don't_ because it was like a dog lapping at a bowl of water, and... yeah, it wasn't good, and the one time I got my nerve up to ask for it, I got shut down. All right? Happy now that I want to go die of embarrassment all over again?"

Bucky was aghast. Horrified. Utterly outraged. "No! _No_ , Summer, that's not... that's not what I was trying to do. I'm just... I'm in shock."

She crossed her arms tightly and muttered, "Yeah, well, join the club."

He sat up straighter, brows knit tightly together as if he were trying to work through a particularly difficult mathematical equation in his head. "Just... _how_? I mean... that's one of my favorite parts of having sex. How can no guy have ever..."

Summer nearly expired right on the spot, knowing that he had no way of knowing what it would do to her to hear that _that_ was one of his favorite parts of having sex. It wasn't as if they'd never talked about such things before, but hearing him say that immediately kickstarted her imagination and made it go places that she _really_ didn't need it going, especially while he was sitting right next to her. She generally tried to keep her imagination on a tight leash and not let her mind be filled with unspeakable thoughts about her best friend, but, _well_... she was only human, and a rather deprived one at that. And he was gorgeous and perfect and, she had no doubt, a fantastic lover.

Not that she'd ever get to find that out for herself. Though she had, unfortunately, overheard blissful feminine moans through closed doors on more than one occasion that served as confirmation of his sexual prowess. _Ugh_.

"I don't know," she sighed. "It's like I said. I suck at picking them, I guess. It's whatever."

"No it's not," he said, suddenly very serious. "It's important, Summer. _You're_ important."

She didn't know quite what to say to that, and the longer that the conversation lingered, the more nervous she became. She ended up tapping her palms on her knees and shrugging, "Well, guess I'll try to pick better boyfriends in the future. But I'm tired. I'm gonna go to bed. Crash here if you want."

She got up and all but dashed into the kitchen before he could say a word, fleeing while she still could. She grabbed a glass from her cabinets and filled it with cold water from her sink, and she drank half of it in one big gulp as she tried to calm her frazzled nerves. She was still trying not to think about what he'd said, how apparently putting his mouth on a woman was one of his favorite things to do in bed, and she _definitely_ wasn't wondering what he'd look like in the middle of the act. He was always so passionate about _everything_ , and she was willing to bet that went doubly in regards to sex. He had such a strong, singular focus when it came to things he was passionate about, and to imagine being the person at the center of that focus...

She suppressed a shiver and then dropped her glass into the sink, leaving it for the next day with the rest of the dishes. She then turned to make a beeline for her bedroom, only to stop in her tracks when she saw Bucky standing in the doorway, arms crossed as he watched her with a peculiar expression. She had no idea what it was that she saw in his eyes, but whatever it was, it made her heart beat faster and butterflies race through her belly.

"What?" she asked with a small, nervous smile.

"Nothing. I just..." He trailed off for a moment, hesitating and looking like he was deeply debating his next words. Finally he shrugged one shoulder and spit it out. "I have an idea."

"... About what?" she asked, eyes a little wide. He was starting to really freak her out.

"We're friends, right? Really good friends."

"Of course," she replied automatically. "You're my best friend. I've told you that like a million times."

He smiled briefly and nodded. "We're always there for each other, right? For pretty much everything. The good, the bad, the ugly, all of that."

"Bucky, you're starting to really freak me out," she admitted, on the verge of screaming.

He grinned and chuckled through his nose. "Sorry. I was just thinking..."

She was going to strangle him. "... Thinking _what_?"

He grinned again, just for a moment before finally getting the words out. "We could have sex. As friends."

Summer was fairly sure that her heart stopped beating and crashed straight to the floor. She gaped at him like a bewildered fish before blinking rapidly and stammering, "Wow, you really are drunk. A lot drunker than I thought."

"I'm barely buzzed," he told her, and she knew it was true. It had been awhile since their last drinks, and neither of them were anywhere near being actually drunk. This was all him speaking, not the alcohol. The buzz simply made it easier for him to get the words out. "Trust me, you wouldn't be taking advantage of me."

She gulped. Was this even real?! "You're serious?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Why not?"

 _For starters, I'm in love with you and this is a horrible idea_. "Because we're friends and having sex might things really weird?" She paused and then blurted, "Do you even _want_ to sleep with me or is it a pity thing because of what I just told you?"

He entire expression changed and he dropped his arms as he replied, "No! No, Summer, that's not it at all, I promise."

"Then where is this coming from?" she asked, bordering somewhere between unbearable excitement and an even deeper pit of despair than usual.

He sighed and leaned against the doorway. "It's been awhile for me. It's been awhile for you. We trust each other. Honestly, it makes perfect sense to me. And that thing you've never gotten to experience," he added with a lick of his lips that she _knew_ was deliberate. "I happen to be pretty fucking good at it."

It was like ascending into the heavens while also jamming a dull knife into her own back. Here he was, Bucky Barnes, the man she had been secretly and silently pining over for several years, offering her everything she had ever wanted and _nothing_ that she wanted, all at the same time. He didn't know it, but he was torturing her and she had no idea what to do.

"So... friends with benefits?" she asked, her voice a lot squeakier than she would have preferred.

"Something like that," he replied, throwing her another grin. "No pressure though. Just an idea."

She stared at him, her blank face giving nothing away of her inner turmoil. She wanted to say yes - _God_ she wanted to say yes - but should she? It would be torture for her, yes, but she was also painfully aware that this might be her only chance to ever be more than friends with him, even if it was only a _little_ more. She had wanted him for so long and had never thought that something like this would ever happen, but yet here she was.

Really, though, despite her inner conflict, there was only one choice to make and only one answer that she was ever going to give. And she had known it from the moment the words left his lips.

On her grave one day would be the words _Summer McAdams: Daughter, Sister, Friend, Idiotic Masochist._

"...Okay."

He blinked as if her answer surprised him. "Yeah?" She nodded quickly, before she lost her nerve. "You sure?"

She nodded again. "Yeah. You make a... good case."

He chuckled. "Yeah I know. I should have been a lawyer."

She rolled her eyes. Of all the times to make bad puns...

He jerked his head towards her bedroom. "Come on. We can talk some more in your room."

"Okay," she said dumbly, staring as she watched him turn and stroll out of her kitchen and down the hallway like he owned the place.

She resisted the urge to scream and jump through the nearest window. This was, apparently, happening. She was going to have sex with her best friend and ages-long crush. And she was gonna do it _now_.

 _Oh God_.

" _Don't pass out, don't pass out, don't pass out,_ " she chanted to herself under her breath before following after Bucky, only to change course at the last minute and make a very necessary pit stop in her bathroom first. Brushing her teeth and shaving her legs lightning-fast suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world to do, so she spent five minutes on last minute and slightly crazed grooming, all the while wondering if this was some elaborate dream that she was going to wake up from any minute. It wasn't.

When she finally emerged from the bathroom and found the courage to step into her own bedroom, she walked inside quietly to find Bucky sitting on the edge of her bed, looking at his phone. He looked up as soon as he heard her, immediately turning off the phone and tossing it somewhere behind him as he smiled. "There you are. Thought you got lost."

"Almost," she joked, lingering awkwardly for a moment before deciding to just go and sit down next to him. If she had any idea what the protocol was with things like this, she was pretty sure that she would have been slightly less awkward about it all, but she had _obviously_ never done anything like this before.

As it was, he could sense her hesitation and, after looking her over for a moment after she sat, he asked, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yes," she answered a little too quickly for her own good, taking him by slight surprise. She smiled and looked away as her cheeks heated up. "Yeah, I... I think like you said, it makes sense. And I could really use a night where I just..."

"Stop thinking?" he guessed, voice just a murmur by that point. He was close, and she shuddered to think of how much closer he was going to get as the night progressed. "Just... let go for awhile?"

She nodded, those rather tame words making her feel very _not_ tame things. "Yeah."

"Good. Then turn off that brain of yours," he said, reaching up and affectionately tapping her forehead with two of his knuckles. "I can _see_ you thinking."

She smiled and groaned at the same time. "Sorry. Tough habit to break, thinking."

"Yeah," he chuckled, standing up from the bed and stepping out of his shoes. "But when it comes to stuff like this, feeling's better than thinking. It's kinda the point, actually."

"Oh really?" She raised an eyebrow. "Do tell me more, O Wise One."

He chuckled and then turned off the overhead light, leaving the soft light of a lamp next to her bed as the sole source of illumination in the room. It was better that way, less glaringly bright light to freak her out and make her feel too exposed.

"I'm not gonna tell you anything," he said, walking back to the bed and heading straight towards her. "I'm gonna _show_ you."

He then knelt on the bed, his hand going to the side of her face as he began to lean in _very_ close, and she sucked in an audibly sharp breath at his proximity. He noticed this and froze, drawing back and asking, "You okay?"

She nodded, swallowing hard and most certainly _not okay_. "Yeah, yeah, just... I..."

"Was this too fast?" He asked, dropping his hand down. "I'm sorry."

He moved to sit next to her instead, and she let out a deep breath now that he was no longer in her personal space. This was already overwhelming and if she wasn't careful, she was going to show her hand and give away her feelings. And that was _not_ an option.

"It's okay," she said, shaking her head as if to clear it. She looked at him and smiled, shifting herself closer towards him until they were facing each other. "I'm just nervous."

"Oh, come on," he said comfortingly, reaching out and tucking a few stray pieces of hair behind her ear. "It's just me. If you're not comfortable with me, who are you gonna be comfortable with?"

 _Oh, if you only knew_ , she thought, sighing as he leaned in and pressed a soft, innocent kiss to her forehead. _That_ was nothing new. Neither was the equally soft kiss that came next on her cheek, at least at first. But that changed when his lips lingered on her skin, just long enough to make it clear that it wasn't a normal, chaste kiss between friends. She closed her eyes and bit her lip as he trailed his mouth down to her jaw, kissing her there as his hand cupped the other side of her face. He peeked up at her briefly before closing his eyes and then pressing his lips to her neck, and it was as he began to kiss her there that what they were doing finally became real to Summer.

How long had she spent imagining this, what it would feel like the first time he ever touched her like this and kissed her like a lover instead of a sister? She used to scold herself for having such thoughts, thinking it would never happen and they'd never be this close, and yet now it was happening. He was kissing down one side of her neck while his thumb softly caressed down the other, and his lips were _so incredibly_ soft and gentle. He kissed his way up to her ear, where his voice came out as a low, smooth groan as he said, "You smell good." She smiled and let out a faint giggle, and he added more quietly, "You always smell good."

Her heart was pounding so hard it nearly hurt. He raised his head, bringing her face closer to his with his hand still cupping her jaw, and her head spun as she opened her eyes and gazed down at his lips. They were slightly parted and unfairly pretty, and they inspired the next words that came tumbling out of her mouth.

"Kissing's okay, right?" she asked breathlessly. "It's not weird or anything? Because if you didn't want to I'd understand, but I can't really imagine doing... um... more without kissing, and -"

One lone finger pressed to her lips and effectively hushed her. He grinned and then cupped her face with both hands, telling her, "Close your eyes, Summer. _Stop thinking_." Then his lips pressed to hers, and he took away her very ability to even remember what thinking _was_.

All of her dreams and all of her little fantasies all paled in the face of the real thing. She let out an embarrassing sound within seconds of his lips touching hers, unable to stop herself, and she felt like he'd lit her on fire. She kissed him back eagerly, all too willing to burn for him, unaware that the entire time, her arms and hands were glued to her sides as if they were paralyzed there.

He broke the kiss after a moment and then chuckled, "You can touch me, you know."

 _Oh right_. That was one of the major perks of this thing. What was she _thinking_ letting it go to waste for even a handful of moments?

"Right, sorry," she smiled sheepishly, her face engulfed in a deep and almost painfully hot blush as she reached up one hand and laid it on top of his shoulder. She kept the other one planted on the bed, mainly because she felt like she'd fall over and pass out if she didn't keep holding herself up.

He glanced down at her hand as it rested on his shoulder, then reached up and took it in his own hand, sliding it into his hair as his eyes met hers again. He then explained, "I like having my hair played with. And pulled."

"Oh," she squeaked out, forgetting how to breathe as she processed that tidbit of information. Then he was kissing her again, and her fingers curled around his dark locks as her eyes closed and her senses went into overload again. The slight, pleasant sting of his stubble scraping against her chin was in stark contrast to the softness of his lips on hers, and when his tongue touched hers for the first time, she let out a helpless and breathless moan that she couldn't believe came out of _her_ mouth. She'd been told that she was "quieter than a dead mouse" on more than one occasion, but then again, maybe that was because she had been choosing the wrong men to kiss and hop in bed with.

He was even better of a kisser than she had thought he would be. The things that he did with his tongue, the soft but consuming way that his lips caressed hers, it all left her head spinning and blood rushing in a way that was already almost overwhelming. And they had _barely_ even got started.

She was doomed.

His hands, before she hardly noticed where they even were, curled around her hips and pulled her on his lap. She grasped his shoulders for balance and broke their kiss with a smile, both of their eyes opening as he grinned back and pulled her so that she was pressed against him. He brushed her hair behind her back and lowered his lips to her neck again, less gentle this time around and more insistent. She slid one hand back into his hair, closing her eyes and instinctively rocking down against him when his teeth nipped just under her ear, making her entire body shiver. He groaned at her response, then brought his lips to her ear and murmured, "Doesn't take much to get you all worked up, does it?"

There was no safe way to answer that, especially when he dropped his head and went back to kissing down her neck, this time reaching her collarbone. She let out a shaky breath and said, "Well, I'm deprived and everything, so..."

He made a disgruntled sound and drew back so he could look up at her, dragging his eyes up and down her body. "Doesn't make any fucking sense. _Look_ at you. How's nobody laid you down and worshipped you yet?"

He was killing her and he didn't even know it. She stared at him, trying to think of something, anything, to say, but she was afraid what might come out if she _did_ open her mouth. Eventually she managed a poor attempt at humor. "Well, you haven't seen me naked yet, so don't get too ahead of yourself."

He wasn't amused. He narrowed his eyes at her, giving her the sort of look that would make the average man shake in his boots and then run away. "Nobody gets to talk shit about you, Summer, including _you_. That's the last thing you're gonna say like that tonight, understand?"

 _Mother of God_ , he was bossing her around. Her nerves screamed with anticipation and her mind raced with dizzying flashes of what else he could do with that dominant streak of his. She nodded. "I understand."

His eyes softened then, and his gaze dropped down to her lips as he asked in a far less commanding tone, "Still want to do this?"

She actually giggled at his question. "How many times are you gonna ask me that? Isn't it _obvious_?"

He smiled and shook his head, looking her over and shrugging as he quietly answered, "I don't know. Just want to make sure you want it."

"I want it," she assured him, running her palms down over his chest through his shirt for emphasis. "Trust me."

That was enough for him. "Okay," he grinned before scooping her up and then tossing her down in the center of the bed on her back, making her giggle again. He smiled back and hovered over her, tracing her cheekbone with his thumb before he added with a clearly joking expression on his face, "Just don't fall in love with me."

He kissed her before he could have watched the smile fall off her face and a twinge of sadness replace the previous silly and happy gleam in her eye.

 _Too late_ , she thought a bit bitterly to herself. It was one of the last coherent thoughts she had all night.

Once upon a time, she had wondered if she and Bucky would have the same effortless chemistry in bed as they did in every day life. It turned out that she was very, _very_ wrong. Their chemistry in bed was even better than she had hoped it would be.

He took things slow at first, kissing her senseless as he laid just a little bit of his weight on her and let his hands wander along her still-clothed body. He slipped his hand up the front of her shirt, his palm sliding across her flat, soft belly and then wandering further upwards. He broke their kiss, breathing hotly against her open mouth as he gently caressed her breast through her bra, groaning lowly in his throat before removing his hand and pushing her shirt up with both hands.

She leaned up so he could pull off her top completely, and it didn't even hit the floor before his fingers were at her back, unhooking her bra. He kissed her and then pulled away as he pulled the bra off of her shoulders, dropping it carelessly as his eyes glued themselves to her breasts. Leaning back on her palms, she tried not to smile, but it wasn't easy. Being a close friend, she was well aware of the fact that he was, for lack of a better term, a "breast man". She knew because he'd said as much _and_ because he'd nearly had a stroke maintaining eye contact with her during the few times he'd seen her in some of her more revealing dresses.

"Fucking... _hell_ ," he groaned, both hands going to his two new objects of fixations. He rubbed over them before softly squeezing, testing their weight and how they fit in his hands. His hands weren't particularly small, but they were just a little too big for him to grasp fully. In other words, he was in heaven.

He was working wonders for her self-confidence. She was also going out of her _mind_ , hips squirming beneath him when he ducked his head down and replaced one of his hands with his mouth, kissing and licking and sending sharp jolts of arousal down her body. He made little sounds of pleasure all the while, like he was enjoying just as much as she was if not more, and when he finally came up for air, she was a wreck and he looked _ravenous_.

He climbed on top of her again, pushing her back down to the mattress and kissing her with a dizzying fury. She needed him closer, needed more - much more - and she started yanking up his shirt when he began fumbling with the button of her jeans. He ended up finding success before she did, sitting back on his knees and pulling her jeans down and off of her legs, leaving her in nothing but lace panties while _he_ was still fully clothed.

His eyes raked over her figure, licking his lips in a way that made her nearly shudder in anticipation, but she needed to even things up a bit. She sat up before he could pounce again, reaching wordlessly for the hem of his shirt and tugging until he lifted his arms and let her take it off. He shifted off of his knees and she climbed on his lap again, straddling his denim-clad thighs with her mostly bare ones and throwing his shirt to the floor. Her hands automatically went to the top of his chest, then fanned out over his shoulders, and she was leaning in to kiss him when she saw the way that he tensed a little bit. She paused and quickly realized what was to blame - it was her fingertips trailing along the top of his left arm, and consequently the scars there.

"What's wrong?" She asked softly, removing both hands and letting them hover over where they had previously been.

He shook his head and took her hands in his, putting them back where they had been. "Sorry. Old habits."

She nodded understandingly. "You _know_ I've seen your arm plenty of times before. It's never bothered me before and it never will."

"I know. Just this... last girl I took home, she couldn't stop staring and..." he shook his head again and shot her a humorless smile. "Great way to ruin the mood."

Summer frowned, knowing how insecure he could be about the arm and wishing she could track that girl down and tell her off. "Well," she said as she slowly dragged her hand down the length of the limb, "I'm not some girl you just took home." It was the closest she could safely get to saying _I love you_ without speaking those damning words.

"I know," he murmured, a warm, crooked smile playing on his face as she touched him.

"Don't forget it," she warned him with a grin before leaning down and pressing her lips to a small seam of scars that laid where his neck met his shoulder. There was a long and horrifying story behind the scars, one that he hadn't been comfortable enough to tell her until _months_ after they had first become friends, but she didn't want that story or anything from his past bothering him that night. She kissed each raised, faded line until her lips reached his neck, and he leaned his head to the side to encourage her as she repaid some of the havoc he had inflicted on her neck earlier. He ran one hand up and down her back, slipping into the back of her panties and squeezing rather harshly when her teeth grazed his pulse. She soothed over the spot with her tongue and then looked up at him through her lashes, losing her breath when she saw the raw hunger in his eyes.

"Lay back," he instructed her, and she obeyed so quickly that it made him smile a little. She laid so that she was resting back on the pile of pillows that she slept on every night, and she _might_ have fallen into a brief moment of insecurity if not for the way that he bit his lip as he started stalking towards her on his hands and knees. "You're _so_ fucking hot, you know that?"

All of this was going to hurt _so_ badly once it was over, she knew, but for the time being she soaked up his words and basked in them. She knew she'd be replaying them in her head over and over, keeping them tucked away in a secret corner of her heart and torturing herself like the self-saboteur that she was.

"I bet you say that to all the girls," she said when she found her voice again. He was on top of her again, and her hands were between them, undoing his jeans and trying to push them down as he found himself distracted by her breasts once again. She didn't mind in the least, arching her back and biting down on her lip to keep from moaning as his tongue teased her nipple and his mouth closed around it.

He glanced up at her and shook his head. "Not when I don't mean it."

He was kissing his way back up her chest and doing a surprisingly good job of kicking his jeans off of his legs in the process while she blurted, "If I'd known you thought that, I would have tried to do this with you sooner."

He paused, lifting his head and looking at her with an endlessly amused grin. "I've always told you how pretty you are, Summer."

"Pretty and hot are two different things," she pointed out.

"Yeah," he admitted, lips curling up in another grin. "There's pretty and then there's hot. And then there's _fucking_ hot, and _that_ ," he said, massaging her breast for emphasis, "is what you are."

She started laughing. She couldn't help it. He laughed too before ending the giggles with a searing kiss to her lips, and meanwhile, deep down inside and buried under her laughter, all she wanted to know was why he had never expressed once ounce of romantic interest in her if he truly felt that way. This was absolutely _maddening_.

But it wasn't time for such questions. His tongue was in her mouth, sliding sensually and heatedly with her own, and there was a hardness pressed to her thigh that was impossible to ignore. His hands were everywhere, all over her, stroking and groping and teasing until his right one _finally_ slid between her legs and brushed over her softly through the panties she still wore. Her hips jerked at the contact and he broke their kiss, glancing down between them and watching her body tremble slightly as he one-handedly slipped the fabric down and off of her legs. Then he was touching her again, incredibly softly at first, and Summer's face went up in flames when he exhaled heavily and groaned into her ear, " _Fuck, you're so wet._ "

The press of his fingers became firmer then, but still soft and slow as they touched her _just_ right. She had his hair clenched in her fist, her eyes closed and legs falling apart more widely as whatever inhibitions she had left began to fade under his touch. He was marking her neck with his mouth, a strangely possessive move that she hadn't expected, but then his lips moved back to her ear and made her lose all train of thought as well as a sizable portion of her mind.

"Feel good, baby?"

Her eyes nearly rolled into the back of her head. She answered him with a jerky nod, his use of the word _baby_ making her almost want to cry. He was so perfect it was just _obscene_.

He nipped at her ear and then asked in a low, smooth _growl_ , "Want my mouth instead?"

Something between a moan and a gasp escaped her lips and her eyes flew open, her gaze meeting his as his fingers moved quicker. It felt amazing, and she couldn't remember a man having ever been that good with his fingers, but...

One slightly sloppy kiss to her lips later, he added, "Say the word and I'll fucking _devour_ you."

She almost fell apart just from those words alone. She moaned and then nodded mindlessly quickly, babbling what she'd later realize was _yes, yes please oh God_ , but there was no time to be embarrassed or to even care about what words came tumbling out of her mouth. He kissed her with a new passion that was actually sheer excitement, biting his lip and grinning at her before he suddenly disappeared from view. There was no long, drawn out journey downwards or more teasing, because he knew how close to losing her mind she already was and if he wound her up any tighter, he would just be acting cruel.

Instead, he quickly settled down between her legs and slung one over his shoulder, looking up at her with a sort of heat in his eyes that made her entire body flush. The fact that he was looking at her like _that_ while he was just inches away from a part of her that she never thought he'd ever be this close to... she just might die before the night was over.

He knew her well enough to know that she was on the verge of freaking out. He gently placed a hand on her chest and pushed her to lay back down - when had she started trying to sit up? - and then told her, "Lay back and close your eyes."

"But -"

He pushed a little harder, and she fell back against the pillows with a soft thump.

"Lay back," he said more slowly, a little bit of that commanding tone back in his voice, "and _close your eyes_. Trust me, Summer."

If it had been any other man she'd slept with in the past saying that to her, she might have kicked them out of bed and told them not to bother coming back. She had just never experienced that level of trust before, but this was _Bucky_ and she found trusting him and doing as he said to come as easily as breathing. She laid her head back against the pillow and forced her eyes shut, her mouth falling slightly open when Bucky pressed a hot kiss to her inner thigh, and then another, and _another_ until he was nearly there. He lingered for a moment on that last inch of skin right at the innermost of her thigh, kissing and _sucking_ the way that he had on her neck, and she was stunned at how incredibly _sensitive_ she was there.

Then, just when she had finally managed to relax like he'd told her to, he wrecked her momentary calm by taking his first taste of her. She gasped quietly and froze, keeping her eyes shut tight until she heard and _felt_ a low groan just before he suddenly pulled her closer by her hips and _really_ got started. That was when her eyes flew open and let out a sound unlike any that any man had ever caused her to make before.

It was heaven. It was nothing like her previous lackluster experiences and everything that she had always hoped that it would be, only exponentially _better_. He hadn't been kidding when he'd said how he loved doing it, and the sounds that he made and the way that he occasionally glanced up to look her in the eye as he _devoured_ her like he promised - it was that singular, passionate focus of his that she had been thinking about earlier, and now she was the one at the center of it.

She pulled at his hair, mindlessly clawing at his shoulders and also at the sheets on the bed, all the while moaning in ways that she was far too gone to be embarrassed over. He never relented in his assault, sometimes holding her still and sometimes letting his hands wander up to grasp and play with her breasts, the combination of sensations almost more than she could handle. It was so good and so perfect that she didn't want it to ever end, but it felt like barely a few moments had passed by the time Summer felt herself losing control. She couldn't fight it, so she gave in and nearly ripped Bucky's hair out of his head as she almost - _almost_ \- screamed.

So _that_ was what she had been missing out on all of that time.

Bucky turned his face and nuzzled her thigh, panting and trying to catch his breath as he looked up to find Summer limp and possibly ascending to a new plane of existence. She had let go of his hair and had an arm slung over her eyes, and he very much appreciated the way that her chest heaved up and down with each desperate breath that she took. He licked his lips and then kissed her inner thigh, nipping at it and making her jump a little bit.

" _Oh my God_ ," she breathed, dropping her arm and staring up at the ceiling for a moment. She heard him chuckle, feeling a faint vibration from his voice against her leg as well, and it took her a little bit of courage to look down at him and meet his eyes after all of... _that_.

He laid one more kiss on her thigh before easing her leg back down to the bed and then crawling back up to her, swiping a hand over his moth in the process. Her arms welcomed him, her fingers trying to tame his now-wild hair as he looked down at her with pure heat in his eyes and said, "You have no idea how good you taste." He pressed a soft, gentle kiss to her lips and added deviously, "I love that I was the first to make you come like that."

She didn't think it was possible to blush anymore than she already was, and yet that was exactly what she did. She bit her lip and murmured quietly, "I can't believe..."

"Can't believe what?" he asked just before eyeing a droplet of sweat that was slowly making its way down between her breasts. He lifted his eyes back up and guessed, "Can't believe I'm as good at that as I said I am?"

She giggled, shaking her head. "No... I had no doubt that you'd be amazing."

He raised an eyebrow, mirroring her grin. "Really?"

She smiled and nodded, reaching up to touch his face. The pad of her thumb teasing the dimple on his chin, she went on, "It was just... _so good_. I didn't want it to end."

"Me either," he grinned. "The way you were moving, and the sounds you were making... it was fucking incredible. _You're_ fucking incredible."

Before she could stammer out another giggle and some semblance of a reply, he kissed her and ground his very, _very_ needy arousal against her hips. She couldn't believe that he wasn't even fully naked yet, but his need for her was painfully clear in how he kissed her and the strain in his voice when he broke away and said, "This was the best fucking idea I think I've ever had."

"Oh yeah?" she grinned, sliding her leg over his hip and pushing against him until he was laying on his side, both of them facing one another. Now that her mind had been thoroughly blown and her life forever changed, she could better focus on other things, like... returning a favor to a man that she had been dying to get her hands and mouth on _forever_.

He saw the change in her demeanor, and he slid his hand up her side and briefly over her breast as he grinned and replied, "Yeah. Think we should make this a regular thing."

"I wouldn't be opposed to that," she said, happily making her grave even deeper and kissing his lips as her hand trailed down his chest. He was strong and fit, something she had been more than aware of before and even since the day she'd met him, but this was the first time she had gotten to really _feel_ him. She didn't let the opportunity go to waste, though after a few moments of heavy kissing and hands _everywhere_ , she slipped her hand down over his defined abs and relished the hitch in his breath when she brushed her hand over him and started teasing him. He kissed her harder and pushed into her hand, desperate for more and for anything that she would give him.

She took a moment to simply bask in the fact that all of this was happening and that he wanted _her_ , her touch and her body. And there was not a modicum of doubt that he wanted those things _badly_.

He broke the kiss when he felt her smile against his lips. He looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and need and asked, "What's so funny?"

"That you're still not naked," she lied. She wasn't a great liar, but if this was going to be a regular thing between them, she was going to have to get used to it.

"I've been waiting for you to fix that," he replied with a touch of a grin, and she answered him by pushing him to lay on his back and doing exactly as he suggested.

And then just a few seconds later, her best friend was _finally_ lying naked in her bed and she was on top of him. He was achingly hard underneath her, watching her eyes soak up _everything_ from his beautifully wrecked hair to his own flushed cheeks, the shallow heaving of his impressive chest and the sight of fully bare thighs that she had long admired when he'd wear his tighter pairs of jeans, and then there was also... _well_.

"Is it true what Nat said earlier?"

Summer's eyes flashed up to Bucky's after his voice broke her momentary trance. He smoothed his hands over her hips and she asked slightly cautiously, "About what?"

He gave her a look that made her stomach flip. "You know what about."

Feeling a little more courageous after what had transpired thus far, Summer lowered herself down over him, using her hands on his chest for support as she replied, "Would you rather I show you or tell you?"

The sheer, somewhat _filthy_ delight in his face made her heart beat faster. "Damn, Summer. I _really_ like this side of you." She flashed him a smile that was both shy and flirtatious before he pulled her close for a kiss, and after a moment spent chasing her tongue with his, he murmured against her lips, "Show me what else you can do with your mouth."

"Say please and I'll think about it." She couldn't believe the words coming out of her own mouth and she had no idea where this sudden courage of hers was coming from, but damn if she wasn't loving it.

He looked up at her in surprise and grinned. "Gonna make me beg for it?"

"It's probably about time _somebody_ did," she replied, and that earned a short laugh out of him. His hands roamed all over her as they spoke, from her hips to her legs and back up again to smooth up and down her back. He couldn't keep his hands off of her, and she loved it.

"All right, all right," he relented, a grin playing on his lips as he tangled a hand in her hair and then positioned her head so that his lips were at her ear. His voice dropped into a rough purr that utterly _slaughtered_ her. " _Please_ , Summer, take my cock in your mouth. I know you want it as much as I do." He nipped at her ear and she _moaned_. "I bet your mouth's watering just thinking about it, isn't it?" His hands grasped her hips and ground them down against his own. "Just don't make me come, 'cause I wanna fuck you after for as long as I possibly can."

There were no words in the English language to describe what his words did to Summer. He turned her head and looked her in the eyes, and all she could do was stare at him and try not to whimper like she wanted to.

"Look at you," he murmured, still grinding slowly up against her while his hands held her in place. "I bet you could come like this, just from me talking dirty and you barely moving on me. What do you think?"

She was about to answer him and beg him to both shut up and _never stop talking ever_ , but then one of his hands went between them and slipped between her legs. She sucked in a breath at the unexpected touch, biting her lip as she dropped her head next to his and rocked against his hand.

"Always knew you had a dirty side to you," he said, his voice in her ear driving her crazy and intensifying everything she was feeling. "You act so innocent all the time and you can't even curse properly, but then I can get you _this_ wet just from telling you how much I wanna feel your mouth on me."

She let out a shaky moan and then arched her back a little, lifting up her head and shifting so that she was essentially riding his hand. This in turn gave him a _fantastic_ view of her breasts, and he bit his lip as he watched her take what she needed from him. He couldn't help but lean up and tease one of her breasts with his mouth, licking and suckling until he lifted up his head and kissed her jaw before telling her, "You're so hot like this. Can't fucking wait to watch you ride my cock later."

 _That_ was all she needed to let go, her nails biting into his chest as she came with a gasp that turned into a moan as the pleasure crashed over her. He watched her greedily the whole time, only stopping the movements of his fingers once he knew it was over and and she was panting, slumped against him. He chuckled and pulled his hand away, kissing her forehead as she took a minute to pull herself together.

She had always known that he would be good, but... his unbearably filthy mouth was _not_ something that she had anticipated. And she absolutely, unequivocally and deeply _loved_ every last bit of it.

By the time that she lifted her head to look at him in a blissful daze, eyes tripping over his perfect lips and his tongue as it darted out to lick them, up to his eyes that were both wild with desire and light with amusement, there was only one thing that Summer wanted to do. And she wasn't about to let him distract her again.

He leaned up to kiss her, wrapping his arms around her as if he planned on flipping them so that he was on top. She pushed him back down with a hand on his chest, breaking their kiss as she watched his eyes pop open and look at her questioningly.

"My turn now," she told him simply, and she'd never forget the way that his eyes darkened with anticipation. She dropped her head down and pressed a kiss to the center of his chest, and she took her sweet time covering nearly every inch of him with her lips as she slowly made her way down. He watched her all the while, never taking his eyes off of her and holding her hair out of her face so that he could see every point of contact between her mouth and his skin. But he hadn't seen anything yet.

The truth was, she _did_ enjoy the act of what she was about to do. She had been told more than once that she was quite good at it, and doing it made her feel a sense of power that she rarely got the chance to enjoy when it came to her previous encounters. The fact that she was about to do it to _Bucky_ , after he had already made her fall apart twice and ended her lifelong deprivation of having a mouth on _her_... it all made her feel a bit nervous once the moment finally arrived.

Lying between his legs, she took him in her hand and looked up when he leaned up on his elbow, apparently not content to take what was coming while laying down. He reached towards her and stroked his thumb across her cheekbone, then gathered up her hair in both hands before wrapping its considerable length securely around his fist. She was glad for it, because at least now she wouldn't have to resort to porn star-worthy flips of her hair when it got in her face, but she knew the reason that he did it was so he could see _everything_ and nothing would be obstructing his view.

He watched her hand as it stroked up and down a few times, his own hand resting in a fist at the back of her head, and then his gaze met hers. She felt like she would explode if she looked into his eyes for a single minute longer, so she closed her eyes and leaned forward to take him in her mouth.

It was only a matter of _seconds_ before her nerves faded away completely, replaced with a confidence that was a result of the almost euphoric satisfaction she felt when he groaned, cursed and tightened his fist in her hair. That was when she gained the courage to peek up at him, and when she found him still staring at her with that incredible heat in his eyes and his jaw clenched, she drew back enough to shoot him a cheeky little smile before letting her tongue slip out and torture him a little. His brows furrowed and his mouth dropped open a little bit, and then when she closed her eyes and brought him back into the warmth of her mouth, he moaned in a way that left her aching all over again.

It wasn't long then before he sunk to his back, head hitting the pillows as a string of curses left his mouth. Falling into a steady, clearly effective rhythm, Summer put all of her energy and focus into driving the man she loved absolutely out of his mind. She followed his cues and repeated motions and techniques that made him pull more tightly on her hair or groan out a string of words that made almost zero sense, and nothing could quite convey just how satisfying it was to look up and see how wrecked he was.

Just before she knew that she'd have to stop so spare him a premature finish, he suddenly let go of her hair and then shot both of his hands on top of his head, fingers threading into his own hair as let out a strangled sort of moan. She peeked up to see him look down at her, her hair now a wild, dark curtain around her face, and the tension and pleasure etched on his face was almost too much for her to take. He was so pretty like that, and the fact that _she_ was the cause of every single moan and roughly-groaned curse that left his mouth was enough to make her feel like she was on top of the world.

"Fuck, Summer, you're so fucking..." his words trailed off and became a noise that he let out through slightly gritted teeth. Her eyes closing again, she felt his hand return to her head and fingers slip through her hair more gently than she would have expected. Then he bit his lip and shut his own eyes, his head falling back and jaw going slack before he suddenly grasped her hair frantically and started to tug. " _Stop_ , baby, stop, _fucking_ -"

She pulled away the very moment his words reached her ears, and she couldn't help but smile as the extent of Bucky's distress became as clear as day. He was breathing hard, staring at her like he wanted to _consume_ her, and every muscle in his body was so _visibly_ tight and tensed that it came as no surprise when he shot up from the bed and had her laying underneath him again before she could so much as breathe.

He took her wrists and pinned her arms above her head, kissing her _madly_ and making her head spin before groaning against her mouth, "You're fucking killing me."

She smiled and turned her head as he began peppering quick, desperate kisses along her jaw. "That was the idea."

His arm hooked behind her knee and brought it up over his hip, their bodies precariously close to being joined as he lifted his head and told her, "Took everything I had to make you stop. Your _mouth_ , Summer... it's..." He trailed off and shook his head. "Fuck, I can't even think."

"Don't then," she said, using her legs as leverage to pull him closer and grind him against her.

"You ready?" he asked, hair falling into his face over his forehead and making him look at out of control as he felt. She nodded quickly, not a trace of anything but pure desire on her face, and then he shifted his hips until they were perfectly aligned. He looked her in the eyes, checking for her consent one last time, and she gave it in the form of a kiss she pressed to his lips after pulling his face down to hers.

She knew that he would never know what she felt in the moment that followed the kiss, when he looked her straight in the eyes and, his lips not even an inch from hers, slid inside of her with a rough exhale out of his mouth. It felt like the sole quiet moment in an otherwise chaotic and frantic night, and her heart sang despite the fact that she knew this wasn't supposed to be an emotional moment. It wasn't emotional for him, and she hadn't expected anything else, but for _her_... it was and always would be so much more than a simple and uncomplicated meeting of needs.

He gave her a moment to adjust to the intrusion, moving once she began to squirm and wordlessly ask for more. Things were slow for only the first few seconds, until his forehead dropped against hers and he groaned, "Fuck, you feel good. So fucking _tight_..."

"That's good, right?" she asked breathlessly, unable to comprehend very much and simply trying to hold it together in the face of _everything_ that she was experiencing.

" _So good,_ " he said, picking up the pace and kissing her neck. "So... fucking... good," he murmured, each word punctuated by a thrust of his hips. "We make a damn good _fit_."

She wished he wouldn't say things like that, but he was oblivious to her feelings and probably always would be. That was all right, though. It was better that way, because she would rather have him like this than not at all.

He was _damn_ good at what he was doing. He knew how to tilt her hips and position her so that he could hit the right places, and when he started to get _really_ into it, he reached up and grasped her headboard for support as started moving faster and deeper. She closed her eyes and met each thrust with one of her own, feeling the tension start to pool low in her belly, and just when she thought that they were both nearing their ends, he let go of the headboard and then flipped them over so that she was on top.

"I wanna watch you ride me, remember?" he said breathlessly in response to her momentarily bewildered expression, and even after all that had already transpired, he still managed to put a new blush on her face. He grinned at her and then took her hips in his hands, telling her, "Come on, baby."

Her palms balancing on his chest, she leaned forward and grinned back at him as she took control. She tortured him for a moment, moving so unbearably slowly that it was more of a tease than anything, making him squirm underneath her and stare pleadingly into her eyes. She copied his earlier move and took his wrists in her hands, moving his arms over his head as she leaned down and started moving faster. Her breasts dragged against his chest, back and forth with each roll of her hips, and she kissed him deeply and passionately while keeping his hands pinned above his head. She liked having all the power, but after a few moments, she missed the feeling of his hands on her body too much to keep it going. She released him, the moment she did, he sat up and _crushed_ her to his chest.

She rode him like that, her hand buried in his hair and giving it a quick tug every now and then that would make him groan and thrust up into her harder. His hands would grasp at her breasts when she would lean back, his lips always following, and by the time his kisses reached their most desperate and his movements became ever more erratic, she found herself on the edge along with him.

He had one hand on the small of her back guiding her movements and the other cradling the back of her head as he kissed her with a new frantic passion. He broke away only to groan with his forehead leaned against hers, "You close, Summer?" She nodded, a little bewildered that he'd had to even ask, and then he held her tighter as he kissed her again and then said in a voice thick with need and failing control, "Come for me, baby."

She whimpered a little, that term of endearment still screwing with her head as much as it had an hour before. She kissed him with unhidden desperation, riding him harder and clinging to him like she'd lose her mind if she let go. He broke the kiss, panting and dragging his lips across her jaw as he told her one more time, "Come on, sweetheart, come for me..."

She fell apart with a shaky, careless moan, the clench of her body sending him spiraling with her. He buried his face in her neck and moaned out his end, _biting_ her and sending one last little jolt of pleasure through her body and making her yelp softly. He held her almost painfully tightly through it all, not loosening his grip on her until the very end, when they were both spent and slightly delirious.

She hugged him close, leaning her head on his as he panted against her neck, and she ran her fingers affectionately through his hair. She kept her eyes closed, afraid to open them and let the moment pass them by. With every passing second, reality was creeping closer and without the passion of the moment to distract her, everything suddenly hit her full-force.

She quickly shoved all of those feelings back down where they belonged, so deeply hidden in her heart that even she could pretend they weren't there some days. But one thing that she couldn't ignore was her overwhelming desire to not let him go.

Unfortunately, however, she had to. He finally straightened up, raising his head and blowing out a long, tired breath as he opened his eyes and grinned at her. She smiled back, hoping to God that the words _holy crap I love you so much_ weren't written on her face.

He kissed her lips softly, all of his previous passion replaced with satisfaction and contentment, and then he bumped his nose against hers affectionately and said, "God, you're amazing."

She smiled, her heart swelling at those words. "Yeah, well... you're..." She paused and shook her head, blushing faintly. "I don't think there are words for it."

"Glad I didn't disappoint then," he grinned. His hands slid down her sides, his eyes briefly skimming down her body and then back up again. "I definitely think we should do this again."

"Me too," she agreed despite the fact that she was screaming inside. But she couldn't go back now. She had dug her grave and now it was time to happily jump in and wait for Bucky to bury her alive.

He nodded. "I think it'll work fine. We keep this between us," he said, "and we only sleep with each other. Then if one of us meets someone we like, we end it, go back to normal."

She swallowed and nodded. "Yeah."

He nodded back. "It'll be simple. Easy." His eyes dropped down and a corner of his lips turned up in a half grin. "And really fucking hot."

 _And painful... torturous... probably ultimately disastrous, too_ , her brain very unhelpfully added. On the outside, however, she simply smiled and replied, "Definitely _that_."

He chuckled lightly, and then they were silent for a few moments. He glanced over her shoulder and then asked with a small smile, "Still want me to crash on the couch?"

She rolled her eyes. "I think you definitely earned a place in my bed tonight."

"Good," he grinned. "Because I was gonna say if not, I don't know what _would_ earn me that."

She shook her head and slowly untangled herself from him, extricating herself from his lap and his arms to pull back the mildly destroyed covers on her bed. Once she had fixed those and then straightened up the pillows, she climbed under the sheets and then motioned for him to do the same.

It was nearly 4:30 in the morning, she realized as she pulled the covers up to her chest and Bucky settled in next to her. " _Frick_. I'm glad I don't have to work tomorrow."

"I do," he groaned, his head hitting the pillow next to hers rather heavily. She turned and looked at him as he shrugged and added, "Totally worth it, though."

She smiled and then asked before she could think better of it, "Is cuddling against the rules?"

He furrowed his brows and smiled at the same time. "Why would it be?"

"I don't know," she laughed. "I've never done this before, remember?"

He sighed and turned on his side, and she did the same as he moved closer to her. His arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her close, placing her back to his chest, and she closed her eyes as they both let out deep, tired breaths.

He kissed her neck softly and then asked, "Meet you in the shower in the morning?"

She giggled, her heart skipping at the thought of what sharing a shower with him might inevitably lead to. "As long as you make coffee after."

"Deal."

She chuckled again, her eyes staying closed and sleep starting to creep up on her. She didn't expect him to speak again before he drifted off himself, but his voice in her ear roused her when she was halfway to dreamland.

"Seriously though," he said, "don't fall in love with me."

Her eyes opened and it felt like a blade had just tried to jam its way between her ribs. In her half-asleep daze, she didn't realize that he was simply joking until he spoke again.

"Not that I'd blame you, because I _am_ pretty good with my... well, everything, but..."

She made a scoffing sound and elbowed him as best as she could in their current position. "Go to sleep, Bucky. Or you're on your own in the shower tomorrow."

"Ouch," he chuckled, kissing the back of her shoulder. "Yes, ma'am."

She sighed and closed her eyes, but sleep didn't come so easily after that. She stayed awake for some time after he had fallen asleep himself, listening to the sound of him breathing and savoring the feeling of being in his arms. She was so much closer to having what she truly wanted than she had ever been before, but she still felt a million miles away.

This was probably going to end horribly badly, and she was well aware of that. She could only hide her feelings for so long, and once he found out about them, she would surely lose not only her new lover but also her longtime friend. It was the only real possibility that she could see, and yet she knew herself well enough to know that she would see the entire disaster through to the very end.

At least she would thoroughly enjoy herself along the way.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: thank you guys so much for your feedback & follows! I'm so happy to see that you guys are enjoying this, and I hope you'll like this second part :) only one more chapter after this! I'm also hard at work on the next chapter of Life After Death, so keep an eye out for that soon :D thank you guys again so SO much, and I look forward to your feedback! :D **

Over the course of the next month, Summer sunk so deeply and wholly in denial that she considered permanently moving there and perhaps opening a coffee shop in order to serve other residents of the mythical land, some of whom were probably as royally fricked as she was. Then once a month they'd all get together and commiserate about the thing that they were all in such deep denial about, similar to an AA meeting but for idiots instead of addicts. They'd all reside in a river in Egypt and everything would be miserable.

The morning after the fateful hook-up at her apartment, Summer woke up to kisses on her neck and hands pulling the covers away from her body, and thus began the real start the _friends with benefits_ arrangement that Bucky had so brilliantly proposed. She had thought that she might have still been dreaming, but by the time that he had dragged her into the shower and, after getting her worked up all over again, dropped _on his knees_ in front of her to really wake her up, she knew that none of it was a dream and that it was all, in fact, very real.

Not a day went by after that where she didn't question herself or what they were doing. They had agreed not to broadcast it to their friends to avoid potential lectures or drama, so she couldn't really ask anyone for advice or freak out to anyone about it like she desperately wanted to. Instead, all she could do was act as normal as possible on the outside while slowly and painfully dying on the inside. It was a balancing act that was doomed to fail, but she had a feeling that went for a lot of things those days.

The first week, they saw each other _every single_ night. It was so new and so incredibly _fun_ that they couldn't resist, and if the first night blew her mind, the rest of that week utterly obliterated it. Bucky had the filthiest mouth she'd ever heard or even conceived as being possible outside of self-published Internet fiction, and he made it a point to push her to her limits and see what her body was capable of handling. As it turned out, it could handle a _lot,_ and where before she had always been content with just managing to get there _once_ , he liked to keep going and going and _going_ until she was in tears and begging him to stop. She had never known that it was possible to lose one's mind that many consecutive times in one night, and yet the man responsible for it would simply grin and tell her that it had just taken her this long to find someone who knew what they were doing. She couldn't argue there.

After that first week, they both got a bit busier and the nightly routine became more of a twice or thrice weekly thing. He usually came to her place, saying he preferred her bed although she didn't know _how_ because it was too firm for her liking, but sometimes it was her who would show up at his door and wreck _his_ bed. It wasn't those nights that stressed her out or made her want to rip out her own hair - _usually_ \- but group outings with their friends became a lot trickier.

The thing was, Bucky had never shied away from touching her or acting anything but comfortable with her, ever since they had first become close friends. They were the kind of friends who would share drinks and dance at bars together without thinking anything of it - or at least Summer _tried_ not to think anything of it - and playful touches and tickles and even little humorous smacks were the norm. Everybody was used to it, so then when they ended up at a club with the others two weeks into their _arrangement_ , Summer knew that she needed to act completely normal even though now when Bucky touched her, it felt _anything_ but normal.

She sat there with her drink, dying inside as everyone carried on as they always did, including Bucky as he sat next to her at their table. He'd elbow her and point out when a guy was checking her out, stretch out his arm on the back of her seat like he always did, steal her drink and down half of it while she protested - all completely normal things that were now almost unbearable since they had crossed a very significant line.

She expected Natasha, the resident know-it-all - as in literally knowing everything about everyone even when there was next to nothing to go on - to pick up on what was happening and immediately corner Summer later to demand what was wrong with her. But maybe she was a better actress than she thought, because she even kept her cool when, three rounds in and in the midst of a vibrant table-wide conversation, Bucky's hand slipped inconspicuously under the table and to her leg.

She almost choked on her drink and quickly glanced at him with poorly hidden alarm, but he was in the middle of recounting a story to Peggy about some old adventure he'd had with Steve, and he wasn't looking her way in the least. She told herself to chill out and took another drink, though her heart began to pound in her ears when his hand didn't remain still but rather slipped slowly up her skirt and creeped inwards to her inner thigh. She could have pushed him away or squirmed her legs shut, telling him no, but being the glutton for pain that she was, she didn't. Instead, nerves on fire, she shifted and made it easier for him to reach her. He took the invitation for what it was, and as he laughed with Peggy over one particularly hilarious part of his story, he began Summer's real torture.

She both loved and absolutely hated every moment of it. It was so _bad_ and so dirty and nobody had ever done this to her in a public place, much less at a table full of her closest friends, but she was the one allowing it and secretly loving it, so what did that make her? She even kept up the charade when he turned and looked at her, straight in the eye, and asked her if she remembered this one time that he almost got into a fistfight with an irate cab driver, and all the while his fingers were moving slowly and torturously and she couldn't even breathe. She could see that little faint gleam of mischief in his eyes as he waited for an answer, and after she gave it in a surprisingly steady voice, he laughed and then turned back to the others to resume the story.

She had been right on the edge of losing it when Natasha decided that she wanted to dance but not with any of the grabby-handed guys at the club. She asked Summer to get up and go dance with her, and Bucky withdrew his hand immediately and at the _worst_ possible time. Summer, all but dying as she tried desperately to conceal her distress, nodded to Nat with a shaky smile and then, as Nat dragged her off, Summer turned to look at Bucky as he smiled at her innocently. He was leaning his chin on his thumb, other fingers pressed lightly to his mouth in a completely normal, casual way, but she knew there was nothing normal or casual about it when he just barely licked at one so discreetly that she was the only one who could have possibly seen it.

God, how she hated him.

He made sure to make it up to her later, but it was only the first stunt that he pulled like that. More came later on in the next few weeks, like when he grabbed her and kissed the hell out of her in the middle of Steve and Peggy's kitchen while the other couple bickered in the adjoining living room over what to watch on TV. It was like it was his mission to fluster her as much as possible, and half the time she barely knew how to handle it. He was maddening and exhilarating and literally an _idiot_ if he couldn't see what he was doing to her, but it didn't seem that he did in the slightest. He was just having fun, and she was having the best _and_ the worst time of her life.

During the day, aside from when he did obscene things to her under tables at clubs, he acted no different than he ever had. He still told her anything and everything and their friendship was, in daylight hours, largely unchanged. In bed he showered her with pet names like _sweetheart_ and _baby_ and then the rest of the time, she was just Summer again. She knew that was how it was supposed to be, after all, but it didn't confuse her any less. She couldn't fathom how someone could be as into a another person as he seemed to be when they were intimate, and yet then once it was over, revert back into buddy mode.

But it was better than nothing, right?

* * *

Near the one month anniversary of their first night as "friends with benefits", Bucky headed out of town to spend a three day weekend at his younger sister's home in Pennsylvania. He did that from time to time, getting away from the city to spend time with Rebecca and her handful of kids who adored him, and he always came back smiling a little brighter and a little happier.

Summer offered to help him pack the night before he left. He accepted, and then as a result, zero packing got done until an hour before his train left the station the following morning.

Halfway into his absence, Summer roped Natasha into coming over to her place and drinking with her so that she wouldn't have to drink alone and feel pathetic. She wasn't drinking for any particular reason other than the fact that it was a Saturday night and watching movies with her favorite actors in them was more fun with friends and alcohol. Also, she was trying her damnedest not to think about literally anything, so it was a good plan to make that happen.

Summer was on her third glass of wine and Natasha her fourth when they found themselves laughing so hard that they were crying. The movie on the TV was mostly forgotten, and Summer hadn't felt so carefree in ages. She had a major case of the giggles, and even Natasha had them too, and that wasn't something that happened often.

"I'm so glad you came here tonight," Summer said through her slowly dying laughter, glass of wine still in hand. "I really didn't want to get drunk alone and watch _Twilight_ alone."

Natasha glanced at the television, where said movie was still playing, and then both women burst into another round of laughter before Nat gestured to the TV and said, "It's so much better when you're watching it drunk."

"I know! You should come back tomorrow and then we can watch _New Moon_ and make fun of it," Summer smiled. " _Oh, Jacob, you're so hot!_ "

Natasha wrinkled her nose and laughed with her friend. "You know, all the memes have it right. He really does look like an alpaca." She then paused and looked down at the couch cushion that she was sitting on. "Something under my butt is vibrating."

She then reached down and produced Summer's phone, the screen of which displayed five unread texts. Summer took another drink of wine, too buzzed to realize what was about to happen as Natasha opened her messages. It was nothing new - Natasha liked to be nosy and she was also fond of screwing with the settings on her friend's phones so that when they typed _lol_ the keyboard would autocorrect it to something like _I'm so horny right now_. Summer had very nearly sent that very text to her boss one time before she caught it just in time and proceeded to plot revenge against her friend.

Natasha looked at the screen, raised one brow and then casually asked, "Why is Bucky saying he misses you and sending you naked pictures of himself in bed?"

Summer choked on the wine in her mouth, accidentally spat some of it out, and then started coughing up a lung as she all but threw her wine glass on the coffee table and lunged for the phone. Natasha didn't fight her for it, and with her voice hoarse from the choking and coughing, Summer exclaimed, " _Naked pictures_?!"

"Well, close enough."

The picture in question was already pulled up, so immediately Summer's eyes were assaulted with the sight of a shirtless and... wet? ... Bucky indeed lying in bed, giving the camera a look that was both smoldering and a little bit humorous, as if he knew that he was being kind of ridiculous but he didn't care and he was going to rock it anyway. His hair was a wet mess on his head, and if she had to guess, he'd just gone to bed after taking a shower.

She scrolled back up to read the other four texts.

 _My niece learned the word "frick" but it sounds like "fwick" and it made me think of you_

 _She just walked up to me and said "fwick you Uncle Bucky" wtf is Becca teaching her_

 _Btw I miss you_

 _Miss me yet?_

That was when he had sent the picture. Summer took a shaky breath and looked at Nat, who looked both surprised and utterly amused.

"So, when did _that_ start?" Natasha asked.

"Um... it, uh... kind of hasn't?" Summer replied vaguely with a nervous smile. When Natasha's brows furrowed, Summer sighed, closed her eyes and said, "We're kind of... um... we're not dating, but we're um..."

"Fuck buddies?" Natasha guessed rather bluntly.

"Yeah, that's, uh... one way of putting it," Summer nodded. Natasha immediately let out a long, heavy breath and rolled her eyes like she'd never been so disappointed in Summer.

"Why in the _world_ would you do that?" Natasha asked. "Are you crazy?"

Summer was more than a little surprised by Natasha's reaction. "... Maybe?"

Natasha sighed again and shook her head, glancing at the TV without really seeing it. Summer was utterly lost and stumped as to why she was acting like this.

Unless...

"Do _you_ like him?" Summer asked in a small, cautious voice.

Natasha gave her a weary look and rolled her eyes. "Oh please. Are you kidding me?"

"Well, sorry, it's just... usually you'd be like 'get it, girl' or... something."

"Well, this is the first time you've told me that you decided to be friends with benefits with someone that you're in love with, and that is an _amazingly_ bad idea, Summer."

Summer's eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. "How did you -"

"Now you're just insulting me," Natasha sighed.

"Well, I... I figured I hid it better than that. Bucky doesn't know, so..."

"That's because he's an idiot," Natasha replied bluntly. "Was this his idea?"

"Yes, but he's not taking advantage of me or anything. I agreed to it 100%."

"You agreed to have no strings attached sex with a man you've spent what, two years pining over? Why, so that you could at least be with him like that if not the way that you actually want to?"

Summer's silence spoke volumes. She looked down at her phone, Bucky's texts still awaiting answers, and then when she looked back at Natasha, she found nothing but empathy on the other woman's face.

"You deserve better than that," Natasha stated simply.

"I know. But he doesn't like me like that. He's attracted to me, I guess, but he... I don't know. It's really confusing and I don't know what to do. I've just been going along with it and keeping it all in so I don't freak him out and make him run the other way, but..."

"Are you sure he doesn't feel the same way?"

Summer thought for a moment. "Sometimes I think maybe he might feel something... like, he'll look at me a certain way or call me something, but then it always just goes back to normal."

"I know that is this is a revolutionary idea," Natasha said dryly, "but have you considered _talking_ to him about this?"

"He said he wanted to have sex and make it a regular thing until one of us finds someone we like enough to date," Summer shrugged. "When he says stuff like that, I don't think that telling him how I feel would end very well."

Natasha sighed and finished the rest of her wine. Summer glanced down at her phone again, still needing to answer Bucky but finding herself distracted when Natasha spoke again.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Natasha began, "but I'm not sure that you _could_ do the friends with benefits thing. Maybe you could if it was with someone you hated but found attractive, although even then, I still don't know. You wear your heart on your sleeve, Summer, and you're probably the single most emotional person that I know. I don't mean any of this in a bad way. It's who you are and you should be proud of it. But at the same time, look at what you're doing to yourself."

"I know," Summer muttered, a lump growing in her throat just from hearing Natasha put what she already knew into words. "I'm an idiot."

"He's the bigger idiot," Natasha opined. "He knows you, too. And even if he somehow doesn't know how crazy you are about him, he still shouldn't have put you in this position."

Summer shrugged. "I don't know about that. I mean, we talked everything out first. And he's... he's so good at... _everything_. Like... he has seriously changed my life."

Natasha chuckled at her wording. "Well, I take it you've finally gotten to experience a few things that you were deprived of before."

With wide eyes, Summer nodded and giggled, "Oh my God, _yes_. I never even knew that it could be this good. At least not in real life. Maybe in books, but..."

Her phone vibrated again. She looked down and read, _Well now you're just ignoring me_.

Quickly, she typed out, _I'm sorry. Nat's here and I didn't see my phone go off. Nice pic btw :)_ After pausing for a moment, she quickly added, _I miss you too_.

She and Natasha chatted a bit more, Nat reminding her to be careful and protect her heart as much as she could going forward before calling a cab to take her slightly tipsy self home. She agreed not to tell anyone else for the time being - or kick Bucky's ass like she clearly wanted to - and after a hug or two, Summer saw her off and then was alone again before she knew it.

After locking her door and taking care of the wine glasses so she wouldn't have to in the morning, she trudged off to her room and changed her clothes, going about her usual routine. By the time she ended up in bed and had a chance to check her phone again, she unsurprisingly had a couple of new texts waiting.

 _Yeah thought you'd like that :) What are you doing now?_

Burrowing deeper into her covers, she replied, _Laying in bed, same as you_.

His reply came almost instantly. _Pic?_ He added an emoji with raised eyebrows for emphasis.

She blushed and cringed to herself. _Nooooo I look gross :(_

 _Oh come on. Just one?_

She was about to type a very whiny refusal when he sent her another picture himself. This time he was sitting up in bed, still shirtless, hair still a mess, and he was looking at the camera with his eyebrows scrunched up adorably and his bottom lip sticking out in an exaggerated and equally adorable pout. Her mouth fell open immediately as she stared at the picture, and she knew then and there that she couldn't say no.

If only he knew the power that he had over her.

She sat up and set her phone down, taking her hair out of the haphazard ponytail she had thrown it in and shaking it out a little. Then she used her camera on the phone as a mirror, positioning her hair the way that she wanted and fixing her tank top to make sure everything was contained. Once she was as satisfied as she was going to get, she then held up the phone to take the picture and get it over with. As a last minute touch that made her feel slightly... well, kind of silly, she pulled down one strap of her top so that it was dangling off her shoulder, and then she gave a little smile and snapped the picture before she lost her nerve entirely.

Normally, she'd take about twenty pictures and find only about two among them that she could stand to look at, but in this case she took only two and ended up sending the first and deleting the second. She sent it with the added text of _because you asked so nicely_ , and then she settled back down under the covers to wait for his response.

When his text popped up, it warmed her heart more than she knew it should have. _Well hey there gorgeous_. Another few seconds passed and then he added, _Don't think I missed that off the shoulder strap thing you did_.

 _Don't think I missed that shirtless thing you did,_ she shot back.

 _What? This is how I sleep_.

She chuckled and shook her head to herself. _Right, you're innocent_.

 _Always_.

She shifted on her side in bed, setting up the phone against the pillow on the other side of the bed that Bucky sometimes slept on. She let out a deep breath, her leftover buzz from the wine making her sleepy and close her eyes for just a moment while she waited to see if he had anything else to say.

Then the phone buzzed and her eyes popped open. She slid her finger across the screen to unlock it and then read his latest text.

 _I shouldn't have asked for that pic_.

She furrowed her brows, quickly typing, _Why_? The little bubble popped up right away indicating that he was typing, and she watched it until the bubble disappeared and his text appeared in its place.

 _Because now I'm picturing you sitting on top of me and slowly taking off that tank top._

She made a small squeaking noise and covered her eyes with one hand as she briefly dropped the phone screen-first to the bed, as if it could hide what he'd just said.

She felt it vibrate again, and when she pulled it up to peek at the screen, she read, _Not wearing a bra under there, are you?_

Face bright red, she quickly typed a _nope_ followed by a blushing emoji, hitting send right away. His own little typing bubble immediately popped up, and she had no doubt that she had his full attention right now.

 _Have I mentioned how amazing your breasts are?_

She groaned and dropped her head back on her pillow. Damn it. She knew where this was going, and this was yet another thing she'd never done with anyone before, unless she counted one time she tried online dating and was sent more dick pics than one woman should ever be subjected to in one lifetime. And she did _not_ count that.

 _You have_ , she replied, _and I'm not sending you a pic of them just fyi_.

His next text made her giggle. _Aw :(_

But just as she was typing again, he added, _Just kidding. I wouldn't ask for that. Although if you offered_...

A new photo then popped up on her screen, and it was a closer shot of his face. He was smiling exaggeratedly widely and giving the thumbs up with his free hand. She promptly dropped the phone and burst into a new fit of giggles.

It wasn't enough that he was caring and sweet and smart and the best lover she'd ever encountered. No, the bastard had to go and be _funny_ too.

After sending about ten laughing and crying emojis, Summer typed out, _Answer's still no, but you almost made me think twice there for a minute._

 _It's all right. I don't need pics. I remember what they look and feel like just fine..._

She groaned again. _You and your boob obsession_.

 _Would you rather I talk about other parts of you?_ He asked next, and she bit her lip as he quickly sent another message. _I was trying to be tame, but if you want me to get dirty._..

 _This was you trying to be tame? Oh my gosh_ , she giggled.

 _Oh I can get so much dirtier,_ he replied. _Say the word and I'll really make this happen_.

She didn't know what it was, maybe the leftover alcohol or the slight adrenaline rush that came with being in this situation to begin with, but she had a sudden idea and she felt just reckless enough to do it. She sat up, fixing her tank top again and pulling it down a little lower than where it would naturally sit. She couldn't believe that she was actually doing this, but she thought that about a lot of things lately, so she bit the bullet and leaned forward just enough to show a glimpse of cleavage - enough to show off a little while still being a tease - and then because she was embarrassed, she put her free hand over her face and peeked through her fingers at the camera as she took the picture.

She sent it before she could talk herself out of it, along with the words _make it happen?_

It was either gutsiest or stupidest thing she had done in awhile. When he didn't answer right away, she started to get nervous, and then when five full minutes passed with not even a word from him, she was about one more minute away from pouring a can of gasoline over herself.

Luckily, however, before she could set herself on fire, her phone buzzed again. This time it was an incoming _call_ from Bucky.

 _Well crap_.

She pressed the phone to her ear and shyly muttered, "Hello?"

"You're one hell of a dirty fucking tease, you know that?"

As soon as she heard the low, clearly _aroused_ tone of his voice, she sunk down into the pillows and let a blissful smile curl across her face. "You started it."

"No, you started it. You got several things started. Including _me_."

"Oh," she grinned, blushing brightly. "Really? All I did was show just a little _tiny_ bit of cleavage."

"Yeah, with your hair all messed up and that shy little look on your face," he retorted. "You're trying to torture me."

"Just returning the favor," she smiled against her phone. "You and your pictures and supposedly tame texts..."

"Those _were_ tame," he replied. "Like I said, I can make it dirty if you want me to."

"You keep saying that, but you're all talk and no action," she teased. "I'm not sure I believe you."

He growled. Actually _growled_. "You're gonna question me, after everything I've done to you? You should know by now that when I say it I mean it."

"Hey, relax," she chuckled. "You sound all mad, like you're about to... I don't know..."

"Punish you?" he guessed. A shiver shot down her spine as soon at the words left his mouth. "Because maybe that's what I would do if I was there. Tie your wrists to the bed and tease the fuck out of you until you were begging me to let you come."

She was _reeling_. He had gone from teasing to filthy in about zero to five seconds. "I... um..."

"You'd like that though, wouldn't you? I bet you'd love every minute of it," he mused, voice low in her ear and full of what she hoped were promise for the future. "I'd spank you and you'd moan and ask me for more, wouldn't you?"

 _Holy crap_. "Bucky, my God..."

"You don't know what to say because you've never tried anything like that before," he said, "but I can tell from the way your breathing sounds that you're getting all hot just from hearing me talk about it."

She swallowed hard and tried not to stutter. "Yeah... _yeah_."

He groaned softly and then murmured, "Fuck. Wish I was there with you right now."

"Yeah, you, um... you sound like you might need a hand," she said with a small smile.

"Wanna give me one? 'Cause I swear it won't take me long between the sound of your voice and the things I'm imagining doing to you right now."

She felt like she might explode and die. "Oh God, I don't know if I can... I've never -"

"I know you haven't, I know," he said understandingly. "Believe it or not, neither have I."

"... Really?"

"Really. So I'm up for a... learning experience if you are."

She giggled faintly and felt her ears burning as her blush spread to them. She was embarrassed, yes, but she was also unbearably horny and worked up from his texts and now his very imaginative dirty talk, and she had just enough of a leftover buzz to push her in the right direction. "Okay."

"Really?"

She chuckled. "Yup. Let's do it."

He chuckled back, the low rumble of his voice sounding like velvet in her ear. "All right. I'm gonna make this good for you, sweetheart, don't worry. You won't regret it."

She closed her eyes, relishing the way it felt whenever he called her sweetheart, even if it was only in sexual situations like these. She'd take what she could get and savor it. "Okay."

"All right. Close your eyes and just... pretend I'm there. I want you to focus on my voice and imagine everything I say. Can you do that?"

"Yes sir," she replied teasingly.

He _moaned_ a little in response, and the sound made her weak in the knees. "Oh, fuck, baby. Keep calling me that."

"Yes sir," she repeated with a faint giggle, and she knew right then that this would be a night to remember.

She was right. Then again, every night spent with him was one to remember, and that was what made the idea of having forget them and leave them in the past someday so inconceivably painful.

* * *

When Bucky came back home, life went back to the bizarre and decidedly abnormal _normal_ that Summer had gotten used to. She never worked up the courage to confess her feelings to him, and he continued to treat her the same way that he always had.

Three months into their relationship, Summer organized a benefit at her place of employment in partnership with a charity organization that focused on military veterans and their post-war health. She was able to invite her circle of friends to the benefit, and they all showed up to support her, including Bucky.

He showed up in a black suit and black tie, hair slicked back on his head and all smiles when he gave her a hug and kiss on the cheek to congratulate her for her stellar work. He also told her that she was beautiful in her dark blue silk evening gown and matching jewelry that was actually on loan from Peggy, and she beamed at him as she thanked him, feeling like she was on top of the world. He looked so very proud of her, and she was proud of herself as well.

The event went off without a hitch, and a staggering amount of money was raised for vets that might. Summer didn't think that anything could possibly ruin her night, but as always, she could count on the universe to never fail to prove her wrong.

She happened to be walking past the bar when she caught a glimpse of Bucky striking up a conversation with a pretty blonde in a red cocktail dress. From the looks of things, he had even bought her a drink, and they were sharing a laugh when Summer walked by.

She knew the girl. Her name was Anna and she worked in accounting. She was nice and very pretty. Nobody ever had a bad word to say about her, and that made it even worse because Summer couldn't even properly hate her or selfishly warn Bucky to keep his distance.

Summer realized she was staring when Anna said something that made Bucky _really_ laugh, the sort of laugh where he crinkled his nose a little and closed his eyes, and it _hurt_ because that was one of his most genuine ones.

She forced herself to turn and walk away, doing her best to ignore the sensation of what felt like a dull knife jamming straight into her heart. The pain pulsed with every step she took, jealousy and anger and _sadness_ making her want to cry in the middle of what was supposed to be one of her best days.

 _I can't do this anymore,_ she thought to herself, and she made up her mind - she was finally going to have that talk with Bucky later that night. She was going to lay all of her cards on the table because she couldn't put herself through this anymore, and she couldn't bear to lose him to some girl that he met at her _own_ benefit. In fact, she couldn't bear to lose him to anyone.

But later, however, when the party was over and Bucky found her again, asking her if she wanted him to escort her home, she realized how severely she had overreacted to the whole thing. After some casual questioning, he told her that yeah, he'd had a drink with Anna but that had been the extent of it. She'd seemed to like him but he wasn't particularly interested in her, so they parted ways with polite goodbyes and not even phone numbers exchanged, and that had been it.

She was both instantly relieved and instantly disappointed, because she lost her nerve for "the talk" the minute the words left his mouth. She simply smiled and then made a bit more small talk before accepting his offer to take her home, all the while mentally punching herself in the face. She was, as always, her own worst enemy.

Bucky took her home that night and _almost_ made her forget what she had been so upset about in the first place. She could not, however, shake the sense of an inevitable and miserable separation looming _somewhere_ in the future. She knew that it would happen, and yet instead of doing something about it or voicing even a fraction of the thoughts swirling through her head, she closed her eyes and imagined that when he held her close and moaned roughly and loudly against her ear as he fell apart, that maybe, just maybe, deep down, he felt at least _something_ of what she felt for him.

Natasha was right. She deserved better. But she knew that she wasn't gonna do a thing to change it. She would see this thing through to the bitter, miserable end.

* * *

From the day that Bucky had met Summer, he knew that she was something special. There were very few things in life that he was sure of, but he knew _that_ beyond a shadow of a doubt.

She had burst into his studio three years earlier with a crumpled up newspaper ad in hand and a declaration of "I got mugged yesterday and I need to learn how to defend myself because this is the worst city ever and I can't believe that I moved here." He had looked her over, about 5'8 inches of freaked out 20-something brunette with blue eyes that were as determined as they were angry and scared, and he had replied with, "Getting mugged's a rite of passage. Welcome to New York." After she stared at him incredulously, he pointed to a clock on the wall and said, "Have a seat. Next class starts at one."

He hadn't expected her to become one of his best friends, but he had long ago learned to expect the unexpected when it came to life. It was just so rare to have received something _good_ among life's usually much less pleasant surprises.

For all of Bucky's charm, wit, and seemingly easy smiles, there was a lot of darkness hidden beneath that lighthearted exterior. He had been told during his nearly five year stint in therapy upon his return from Iraq some time ago that he used humor and his outgoing nature as a coping mechanism, and while that was certainly better than heavy drinking or bed-hopping - though he'd done his fair share of those things too - it didn't come without downsides.

In general, he found that he was either on one end of the emotional spectrum or the other, and there wasn't a lot of in between. Either he felt good enough to get up, get out of his apartment and go to work, maybe hang out with Steve or the others after and have a good time and laugh and be his usual self, or he could barely find the will to get out bed and he spent most of the day trying to quiet the demons in his head when they would try to mount a comeback and drag him back to hell. It was this struggle that built the foundation of one of his most self-destructive beliefs: that he was just too damaged and messed up to be truly loved.

Steve loved him, sure, but he was different. He was a brother in all but blood, so that put him in the same category as Rebecca. The others, Peggy, Natasha, and a handful of others, they cared for him too, and the same was true of Summer. She was so sweet and giving, and once upon a time, back when he had still been just getting to know her, he wondered if maybe their connection was more romantic than platonic. She was gorgeous to be sure and just his type, and she made him laugh the way very few others could. The idea made perfect sense, and yet nothing ever came of it.

There were several reasons as to why. Summer, while she was an orphan who had not lived a particularly easy life, was still nowhere near the damaged goods that Bucky considered himself as being. He thought of her as far more pure and innocent than anyone else in his life, and the thought of defiling that or asking her to take on his baggage the way that she would have to in a real romantic relationship... he simply couldn't do it to her and would _not_ ask it of her.

And so, early on, he had bottled up any potential feelings that might have existed and he forced himself to view Summer in a strictly platonic light. It was fine because she seemed to feel the same way about him, and she never said a word that made him think otherwise. It was best that way for both of them, and he never had a reason to doubt that. Sure, it made things a little awkward when he'd see her in some great dress or she'd do or say something that made his blood run a little hotter, but he couldn't help that he was attracted to her. He _could_ , however, pretend that he wasn't and completely ignore the occasional desires to kiss her or bury his face in her hair and let its scent overwhelm him.

So that was what he did, and after awhile he started to believe his own lie. He had other lovers - well, mostly one night stands - and she had boyfriends, and they were there for each other in every way that extremely close friends could be. She was one of the highlights of his days, always so upbeat and silly and uniquely able to get his mind off of whatever was plaguing it. It was why she was who he called in the middle of the night when the nightmares were too much, and it was why her door was the one that he showed up to when he was drunk and didn't want to go home to his empty apartment.

But that was also why he knew that she'd never love him in _that way_. She had seen him both high and scarily low, taken care of him when he had bad nights and simply wasn't _there_ , so she knew better than anyone how fucked up he was. With her, he couldn't lie or pretend to be someone who had his life together, like he could with the girls he picked up and brought home, at least until he took his shirt off and they saw the horror that was his left arm.

He'd never find his own Peggy, that much he was sure of. He was happy for Steve, of course, but sometimes he wondered how Steve could make coming home and getting better and moving on look so damn easy when they both knew it wasn't. Steve still had his own demons to deal with from the war, and yet Bucky couldn't help but feel different, like the war had a grip on him that wouldn't let go no matter how many years passed.

But that was his life now. He had no choice but to keep getting up every morning and smile and laugh his way through each day in the hopes that one day, doing so would come naturally and not be such a struggle. Without his friends, he didn't think that he would have been able to do it at all. He owed them all so very much that he knew he'd never be able to truly repay.

Summer, though, she was _something_. Even when he'd gone and screwed with the natural order of things by suggesting they give the friends with benefits thing a shot, she didn't run away or tell him he was crazy but instead rose to the challenge like the brave soul that she was. He couldn't have been happier with the turn their relationship took, because it allowed him to luxury of comfort and familiarity and _trust_ in a lover without the romantic entanglement that would usually come with such a thing. Instead it was perfect and evenly balanced, no expectations or complications, and it also happened to be possibly the best sex he'd had in his life.

They were both free to end the arrangement and move on whenever they wanted to, but four months in, they were still going at it and he didn't have any desire to change that. Not only did he greatly enjoy her company and her friendship, but she had gotten to know his body so well over those four months and she knew exactly what he liked, where he was sensitive, and what would make him get so loud that he'd probably wake the neighbors. He hadn't stuck with one girl long enough for them to learn those things in a _long_ time, but Summer... she made an art of it. And he was all but addicted to her.

Then one day, it finally all caught up with him. The denial and the self-doubt and the partial sheer idiocy his thought process made for a ticking time bomb, and when he least expected it, it went off in his face.

* * *

At 4:32 AM on an otherwise normal Thursday morning, Bucky's eyes shot open and he awoke with a ragged, painful-sounding gasp. He didn't shoot up in bed or immediately recognize that he was safe and that this was his own room in his own apartment. Instead, he laid there in the center of his bed, staring up at the ceiling with his body drenched in a cold sweat, his eyes slowly growing less wide and less scared as the dream slowly faded away and reality replaced it.

His heart was racing, pounding against his chest, and his breathing was uneven and slightly labored. He closed his eyes and cursed at himself for the thousandth time, swallowing down a lump in his throat and wondering when this would finally end. All these years later and all it took was a dream to put him right back _there_ , right in the middle of hell, and there was nothing he could do about it.

There was never any going back to sleep after a nightmare like that. Instead, after his heartbeat had calmed some and he had laid there long enough to fully return to himself, he got up and dragged himself into his tiny kitchen and started making coffee, resigned to being awake and alone for the rest of the very early morning.

It was going to be one of his bad days. He could always tell right away whenever it was time for one of those.

He didn't have work that day but everyone else he knew did, so he was on his own. He didn't leave his apartment the entire day, even though the food in his fridge was scarce and fresh air may have worked wonders for his state of mind. Instead, he sat around and stewed in his own thoughts, trying to distract himself with TV and whatever books he had laying around, but it was a losing battle. It was just one of those days.

Around five in the evening, his phone dinging woke him up from a nap he'd accidentally taken on his couch. He blinked and squinted at the screen, finding a text from Summer asking him if he wanted to go out for a drink around 8 with her and Natasha. Being in no mood to go anywhere or do anything, he declined with as little explanation as possible. But as it turned out, Summer knew him well enough to read between the lines of his day-long silence and uncharacteristically short reply to her question.

He managed to drag himself off the couch to take a shower and change clothes afterwards, but he didn't bother to order dinner or even think about the fact that he really needed to eat something at _some_ point. He wasn't hungry and he didn't care, so when he ended up back on the couch half-watching whatever barely interesting thing was on ESPN, he planned on staying there the whole night until he passed out and hopefully slept through the night this time. Maybe he'd get smashed along the way to help aid the sleeping process.

Then, when he heard a knock on the door right at 8 o'clock exactly, he looked at the door in confusion before making himself get up and answer it. When he opened the door and saw who was on the other side, he smiled for the first time all day.

"So," Summer chirped cheerfully, carrying her giant purse on one arm and a plastic bag on the other, "I brought food and I brought movies. I also brought you the disgusting beer you like and it's in my purse and making it _really_ heavy."

"I thought you were going out," he said, smile stuck on his face as he immediately reached out to take both the food and her purse for her, then stepping aside to let her in.

"Yeah, well, I know you well enough to be able to tell when you're having a bad day," she said, closing the door behind her once she was inside. "I also know that you tend not to feed yourself very well when you're having one, so here I am."

Setting the bags down in front of his couch, he shook his head and continued to look at her like she was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen. "You're amazing, you know that?"

She shrugged, stepping out of her shoes and making her way to her usual side of the couch while smiling back at him. "I try."

He chuckled as she settled down on the couch, still in her work clothes and looking far better than he did in his worn out t-shirt and old sweatpants that had survived almost as much as Bucky himself had. Her nearly jet-black hair was down and she wore a pretty floral blouse buttoned to her collarbone, and black dress pants that were thinner than they looked and that fit her quite well. He felt like a slob compared to her, but he always kind of felt that way, more or less.

After setting out the food and the beer on the sad excuse for a coffee table that Bucky tried to decently clean off first, Summer grabbed her purse and produced the two movies that she'd brought.

"So... we have _Silver Linings Playbook_ and, if you don't feel like watching two crazy people fall in love, I also brought _The_ _Hangover_." She then paused and shrugged, "I like Bradley Cooper. Don't judge me."

He chuckled. "You pick. Either one's fine with me."

"Oh, then it's definitely the first one," she said, hopping up to put the movie in.

What followed was several hours that were like the mental equivalent of homemade chicken soup during a horrendous cold. Sitting back with Summer and laughing with her while eating, drinking, and watching a movie couldn't heal him or make his problems go away, but it was a balm that made getting through it significantly easier. He didn't think about his nightmares or the memories that caused them when he looked at her or laughed at one of her silly jokes, and he didn't feel quite as broken when he'd say something that made her laugh until she snorted a little and got embarrassed. She just... made him feel better. Like a person and not a thing that was just surviving rather than really living.

When the food was gone and they'd inadvertently talked their way through most of the movie, which Bucky had to admit was pretty good, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to put his arm around her and pull her against his side and finish the movie curled up together. She was more than happy to lay her head against his shoulder, not budging from her place under his arm until the movie was over and the credits were rolling.

She lifted her head and smiled at him. "So, like it?"

"Yeah," he replied with a nod, eyes still on the TV. "It was good. Not as cheesy as I expected."

"As if I'd ever subject you to a cheesy romantic comedy," Summer scoffed. "You must not know me at all."

He scoffed right back, turning his eyes to her and retorting, "Oh I think I know you very _very_ well by now."

"Then you should have more faith in me than that," she grinned. "So, wanna watch the other movie?"

"Yeah, guess so," he nodded, and then he moved his arm so that she could get up and switch out the DVDs. He watched her all the while, laughing when she almost tripped over a cord on the floor and laughing even more when she glared at him for it.

By the time she made her way back to the couch and had the DVD player remote in her hand, Bucky had already lost interest in watching another movie. When she aimed the remote at the TV, he reached out and took it from her and hit the power button before tossing it on the floor somewhere. She looked at him questioningly, but only until she saw the intent in his eyes. He cupped the side of her face and leaned in close, softly pressing his lips to hers and _feeling_ the way that she lost her breath at he touch.

She always did that. Even after four months of doing this on a weekly, sometimes nightly basis, she always made this breathless, shivery noise whenever he would first kiss her. It was like he took her by surprise every time, and he couldn't make sense of it. They'd both grown so used to being this close and doing what they did, and yet she had that same reaction every time, as if each kiss was the first one all over again.

He pulled away after that initial kiss, short as it was, and watched as her eyes fluttered open and a little smile crossed her face. "Change your mind?"

"Got distracted," he replied with his own tiny grin before leaning in and kissing her again. She didn't lose her breath this time, instead kissing him back and slowly bringing her hand to his chest as she scooted a little closer to him.

"Sorry," she mumbled against his mouth.

"Don't be," he mumbled back a bit gruffly before sliding his hand into her hair and using it to angle her head so that he could kiss her more deeply. She followed his lead, parting her lips for him and letting out a quiet, low moan when he slid his tongue against hers. The sound and the _feel_ of it sent an electric jolt down his spine, and as the kiss grew hungrier, so did they.

He let himself get lost in her. In fact, they did something that they had never done together before, which was to sit there tangled up with each other and simply kiss the minutes away. Normally they would have undressed the other and stumbled off to bed within the first five minutes, but this time they stayed right where they were and simply... _felt_.

He hadn't made out with a girl like this since... well, how long had it been? He couldn't remember a single time since high school, nor could he remember a time that he felt so satisfied just from kissing. The heat was there, the desire for more burning under his skin, but for once he wasn't focused on that. He focused instead on the warmth of her mouth and the way that her breath would hitch when he'd nip her lower lip or give her lips a break so he could kiss down her neck. She twisted her fingers in his hair, tugging gently when he'd suck on a particular spot under her ear and flick over it with his tongue. She pulled him back up then and kissed him harder than before, but they still didn't go further, not yet.

It was easy, it was simple, and it was so _good_ that he didn't realize in the moment how much time they passed like that. He was so lost that by the time Summer was the one who needed more, he was almost caught off guard by the way that she broke the kiss and looked him in the eye as she shifted, moving her leg over both of his and then settling down so that she straddled his lap. He stared at her in a heated daze, lifting his arms when she reached down to the bottom of his shirt and pulled it off of him, throwing it over the back of the couch before kissing him again.

Summer pressed herself against him, grinding her hips down slowly against his and making _him_ the breathless one. His hands clutching her hips, they kissed with all open-mouthed lust and occasional soft groans that made the other need _more_. She rocked her hips down in a slow, steady rhythm, and the barriers between them were thin enough that they could both feel every push and every drag just enough to make it satisfying.

While she rocked, he pressed his lips to the base of her throat and began undoing the buttons on her blouse, fingers shakier than he expected them to be. Once they were all undone, he hurriedly pushed the fabric aside and then watched as she shrugged out of it and let it fall to the floor behind her. Before he could claw at her bra to get it off, she reached behind her back and undid the clasp for him, knowing full well what he wanted. Once it joined her blouse on the floor, he pulled her closer with a low and needy grown, mouthing immediately at the tops of her breasts and slowly, thoroughly working his way down.

Both of them topless and moving together in an effortless and languid but steadily quickening rhythm, the pressure built and the tension grew until Summer had to grab the back of the couch with both hands for balance. Her hips rolled and her back arched, her head falling back for a moment before he pulled her back down for a long and desperate kiss. She moaned against his mouth, her rhythm starting to get erratic, and his hands moved her hips for her as they both began to near the same end.

Panting against each other's lips, Bucky opened his eyes and looked up at her, his next words tumbling out of his mouth before he could think twice. "Look at me, sweetheart."

Her eyes opened immediately, and when her gaze met his, he felt... _something_. He didn't know what it was and couldn't even think about it at that moment, but whatever it was, it brought a dull ache to his chest as he leaned his forehead against hers. One of her hands went to the back of his head, threading through his hair that was a mess and falling into his face as he kissed her one more time. Then she was falling apart, body trembling and mouth falling open as she gasped through the pleasure wracking through her.

He watched her in a state of awe, unbeknownst to her, and though it was something that he had seen _many_ times before... he found that he just couldn't take his eyes off of her. He watched her all the way to the end, which was when one last shudder of her hips against his set him off and, unlike her nearly silent end, had him making a sound that surprised himself with how loud and beyond his control it was. His arms wrapped around her and crushed her against him, his head dropping down to her chest as he gave in and relished the moment while it lasted.

When it was over, he didn't let her go. He kept her right where she was, breathing hard against her skin as his heart slowly calmed down from its previous wild beating. He realized after his mind returned to him that his ear was pressed to her heartbeat, and he kept his eyes closed as he listened to the lulling, comforting flutter.

She ran her fingers through his hair, kissing the top of his head here and there, making no effort to separate herself from him. She cradled him close to her, and when he realized after a few more moments that he _still_ didn't want to let her go, that strange dull ache in his chest returned.

What they'd just done, he hadn't bothered to do since he was a horny teenager with a shy girlfriend and few other options. And yet it had been so _good_ , the end shockingly intense, and it took him a moment to understand what it was that had made it so different.

It hit him like a hard kick to the chest. It was different because it was with _her_. _Everything_ was because of her.

His eyes opened as realization finally broke through self-built steel walls of denial and self-loathing to at last dawn on him. It was so obvious and had been for so long if he had only opened his eyes to what had been right in front of him all along.

He loved her. He was _in love_ with her. There was no stopping it or going back, because he had fallen hard while he had been busy thinking that he wasn't even capable of loving anyone like that again.

He turned his head, nuzzling her chest and leaning his forehead against it as he shut his eyes and let the full reality of it all wash over him.

He loved her _so, so_ much.

He swallowed down a sudden lump in his throat and let out a rough exhale against her skin.

 _Fuck_.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Aaaaaand here is the final chapter :D Thank you guys so, so much for your reviews and follows and favorites, it means the world to me and I just want to hug all of you :D my main story Life After Death just hit 1k reviews, which is the event that I wrote this thing to celebrate with, so woo hoo! *pops open champagne bottle* I hope you all enjoy the conclusion, and I look forward to hearing from you guys! I LOVE YOU and I love midnightwings96, who also just updated** ** _Ruin_** **recently, so if you're a reader of that, go have a looksie :D thank you guys again!**

For the next month, even though Summer and Bucky were both finally on the same page and fully aware of how _stupidly_ they were in love with each other, neither of them said a single word about it. They continued on as before, both too scared to say anything about how they felt, and thus began a truly epic exercise in miscommunication.

Bucky, suddenly hyperaware of every move he made around her, cut back on the pet names he used in the heat of the moment and mostly stuck to just using her name. It suddenly felt too intimate to call her by such names when they weren't actually "together", and since she had given no clear indication that she wanted that, he trained his mouth to stick to more neutral terms. Summer, of course, noticed the change immediately and obsessed over it, convincing herself that it signaled a step back on his part.

Bucky also began to act a bit more strangely outside of the bedroom. Where they had always been casual and comfortable with each other during the day and around others, he seemed wary of being too touchy and even dropped his dangerous habits of kissing her when nobody was looking or things like teasing her under tables. She took this as another bad sign, but since she didn't say a word about it, Bucky assumed that she was fine with the change and likely even wanted it, because maybe he'd been being a jerk before by doing those things to her.

The last straw, however, came on the dreaded and dubious "holiday" of Valentine's Day. When Bucky told her that he would have gotten her something had Hallmark made cards for friends who had sex on the side, Summer joked that he should have just gotten her a regular card since they were basically a couple these days anyway. The resulting panic in his eyes and incredibly awkward lack of a response told her all she needed to know, or at least that was what she assumed. And he didn't set her straight.

Then, not long after that, she met someone. Stark Industries was holding a joint event with one of the other bigshot giant corporations in town, and that meant joint planning with _their_ event planner, who turned out to be tall, charming, and disgustingly good looking. His name was Jack, and she met him for lunch one day after spending a week talking on the phone and through emails - all work related, of course. And they hit it off so well that by the next day, he asked her on a real date in a charmingly worded email.

She turned him down, saying that she was busy. It wasn't a total lie, but it wasn't exactly the truth either.

He was persistent, however, and not in a creepy or unwanted way but a charming and adorable way. He asked her out again a couple weeks later, during one of their lunch meetings, and they got along so well that she didn't outright say no but instead told him she'd look at her schedule and get back to him.

And by "look at her schedule" she meant freak out to Natasha and obsess over the issue until she nearly gave herself an ulcer.

But really, why should she say no? Bucky had been steadily pulling away from her and she wasn't sure how much more pain she could handle before she lost her mind. She had already been hurt so many times since they started sleeping together, never on purpose but still hurt nonetheless, and Natasha told her the same thing that her brain was telling her - that maybe it was time to move on.

Natasha also pointed out that if Bucky did have deeper feelings for her than he let on, the date would be a perfect test of that. All Summer had to do was mention that a great guy she'd met had asked her out on a date and that she was considering saying yes, and Bucky's reaction would say everything. If he acted jealous or asked her not to go, then just maybe he _did_ feel the same way. But if he seemed indifferent and encouraged her to go, then it would perhaps serve as confirmation that it was indeed time to let him go.

Loathe as she was to admit it, Summer knew that Nat was right. Despite her heart screaming _no_ at the very idea, she listened to logic and planned "the question" for the next night that she and Bucky were set to see each other. In the meantime, she rehearsed her question and obsessed over the matter until she was blue in the face. Anxiety could be a real bitch sometimes.

When the night finally came, she made sure that she was as well-prepared as she could possibly be. She headed over to Bucky's place like they had planned the previous day, and once she got there, she acted like all was well and nothing at all was off, treating him to a five star dinner of pizza and beer on his couch before she began mentally kicking herself to just get it over with.

"So, um," she began as Bucky looked away from the TV and towards her, unaware of what she was about to drop on him, "I kind of... uh..."

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. "... Yeah?"

"I might... have gotten asked on a date by this... really great guy."

His smile froze on his face, and in fact his entire face froze as her words sunk into his brain. "Oh."

"Yeah, he does the same job I do at a different company, and we've been working on this event together and doing lunch and and stuff. He's asked me out before and I said no, but... he asked again, and... I think I might like him. At least enough to try one real date, you know?"

"... Yeah, yeah," Bucky said, blinking a couple times and nodding. "Yeah, I get it."

"Okay," she nodded back, her stomach possibly consuming itself with how nervous she was. "I just wanted to tell you first, since we agreed that if we wanted to date someone we would..."

"You want to end this?" Bucky asked, and for a split second, she thought that she saw real, genuine disappointment on his face. Maybe even a flicker of panic.

"Well, I... not really, but I mean..." she paused and tried to wrangle together her thoughts into one coherent sentence. "It's been awhile since I've had a real date. Almost six months, and... I don't know. I don't want to miss out on what might be a good opportunity, you know?"

He nodded, jaw clenching as he did so, and Summer prayed to God that he would crack and tell her _no, don't go out with that guy, stay here with me and I'll take you to dinner tomorrow myself_. But he didn't do that. Instead he replied, "Yeah, right. Right. No, I get it. It's been a long time. I don't want to hold you back."

She could almost hear the sound of her heart cracking in half. "Okay. He seems like a pretty good guy, so..."

"Good," Bucky nodded again. "What's his name?"

"Jack," Summer replied. "He's funny. First guy I've met in a long time that I actually want to go out with."

Bucky nodded again. He seemed permanently stuck on "nod mode". "Well, that was our agreement, so... yeah, I mean go for it." He forced out a short laugh. "I just want you to be happy, so whatever makes you happy..."

 _You make me happy_ , she desperately wanted to say, but instead she forced a smile on her face. "Well... same here. It's been a long time since you've seen anyone, too."

He shook his head and shrugged. "Haven't met anyone worth seeing."

"Well, I'm sure that'll change soon enough."

Then there was silence. Summer's heart felt like it had been attacked by crazed ninjas, and she finally had her final confirmation that Bucky really didn't see her as anything more than a friend. If he did, he would have fought for her. And he wasn't doing that.

"So, um... is this going to make things weird, going from... having sex to not having sex?" she asked a bit timidly.

He scoffed and shot her a smile. "Nah. It'll be fine. Like I said before, we'll just go back to normal and... yeah. It'll be fine."

Saying _it'll be fine_ back to back was immediate cause for concern that everything would _not_ be fine, but Summer could do little else but nod and accept that answer. Inside, she could feel a well of tears swelling up behind her eyes, and the slight breakdown that she had been keeping at bay for months was finally at hand. But she couldn't let him see that.

"Okay. Well, I'm glad we were able to talk about this with no... awkwardness or anything," she smiled, lying through her teeth. The entire conversation had been more awkward than pretty much anything she'd ever experienced before.

"Yeah. Hey, part of being friends, right?" he half-grinned back, and as well as she knew him, she missed the slightly bitter tone in his voice.

"Yeah. Actually, um... I have work early so I should probably... go ahead and go," she lied again. She did have work in the morning, but she needed to leave because the dam was about to burst and she was _not_ about to cry in front of him.

"Okay, yeah," he said, getting up to help her gather her things and walk to the door. "Get some rest. When's the date?"

"I'm not sure," she replied as she put her purse over her shoulder and started heading to the door with him behind her. "I'll have to talk to him and figure it out."

"Well, let me know how it goes," Bucky said, voice forcibly light as he opened the front door for her to walk through. "Make sure he takes you somewhere nice."

"Okay," she smiled, turning towards him and lingering in the doorway. What were they supposed to do now? Kiss goodbye? Thank each other for the months of commitment-free sex and be on their respective ways?

 _God, just say something_ , her brain screamed at both herself and Bucky. If one of them just _said_ something, anything at all...

"See you later," he finally said, smiling at her but not touching her anywhere.

"Yeah, see you," she smiled back before turning and getting the hell away from him as fast as she could without being obvious about it.

Talk about going out with a whimper.

She managed to hold it all in until she hailed a cab and got inside. The minute her address left her mouth, she lost all self control and tried to hide a sudden sob with her palm over her mouth.

Meanwhile, after Bucky closed his door and the reality of what had just happened sunk in - along with how he had frozen and just let her _walk away_ like a fucking idiot - he stared into space for about three entire minutes before snapping and flying into an apartment-demolishing rampage. He broke about half of what little dishes that he owned and flipped over his coffee table hard enough to make one of its legs break, and then as a grand finale, he punched a hole into his bedroom wall. He'd never claimed to be emotionally mature, so he had no shame in the matter.

Summer went home and continued crying her eyes out, releasing almost six months of pent-up angst and misery that she had been ignoring with Bucky's help. It was easy back then, but with now knowing the truth - that there was no future with him and that she'd been an idiot to think that there might be - there was no keeping it all inside anymore. There was only her empty bed and a bucketful of tears, along with a healthy amount of self-hatred for having gotten herself into this mess to begin with.

Bucky, on the other hand, refused to cry like a very significant portion of him wanted to. What was the point? She'd made herself very clear. She liked this Jack _jackass_ and wanted to start seeing him, so that was that. If she was on the same wavelength as Bucky, she'd have no desire for such a thing because he sure as hell didn't want to date any other women.

Neither of them got much sleep that night, but it was just as well. Bucky was used to it, and Summer felt as if she deserved it for treating herself so poorly for so long.

* * *

A few days later, Summer had her first date with Jack. It went surprisingly well. He was funny and cute and pretty much everything that she liked in a guy. He respected her too, leaving her at her door with a kiss on the cheek that was neither too much nor too little for a first date. She appreciated that so much that she went ahead and planted one on him, a short but soft little kiss that took him by surprise, and they both parted ways with smiles on their faces.

Maybe her love life wasn't dead in the water after all.

Though Bucky had asked her to tell him how it went, she didn't text or call him. She hadn't heard from him since the night they ended their little... whatever it had been, and she was a bit scared to be the first to say something. It seemed so awkward now, at least on her part, and the idea of talking to him or even seeing him felt too painful to handle. The wounds were so fresh and so raw, and she couldn't stand to keep reopening them like that. So she'd wait for him to talk to her first.

That same night, Bucky went out to a bar with Peggy, Steve, and Sam, who was one of their mutual old Army buddies. Bucky made it a point to get as drunk as he could as fast as possible, and once he was fairly hammered, he put on his best flirting game and tried his best to forget about the girl he couldn't have, if only for a night.

Peggy, who was usually the smartest person in every room that she was ever in, was highly adept at piecing things together. After having been fairly sure of what was happening for months, the last straw was receiving a text from Summer talking about what an awesome date she'd just had. Peggy looked up from her phone and narrowed her eyes at the sight of Bucky talking up some tall brunette at the bar, finding it quite telling that after six months of those two mysteriously dating nobody, suddenly Summer was dating some random guy from work and Bucky was drunkenly flirting with a cheap Summer replica.

She sighed and asked her husband, "Do you ever feel as if we're running a daycare for tragically stupid adults?"

"Hmm?" Steve asked. Peggy rolled her eyes and stood up from their table and walked straight towards Bucky.

As he laughed at something undoubtedly not very funny that the girl had just said, Peggy strode up to his other side and smiled brightly at the woman before declaring, "You don't want to sleep with him. He's in love with someone whose hair and eye color you happen to share, and he would probably call you by her name and cry with shame as he climaxes."

Bucky choked on nothing and stared at Peggy with wide eyes and mouth agape, as if nobody had ever done anything so uncool in the history of mankind. The girl, however, cringed and replied, "Whoa. Thanks for the heads up."

"My pleasure," Peggy smiled as the girl got up and walked away.

"What the fu-"

"Shut up and come sit down before you make an even bigger bloody idiot of yourself," Peggy ordered, grabbing Bucky's sleeve and physically dragging him back to the table herself. After pushing him back down in his seat, she sat as well and immediately asked, "Are you completely stupid?"

"What just happened?" Steve asked, blinking at both of them while Sam grinned and sat back as if to watch the show.

"I have no idea," Bucky half-exclaimed.

"Oh please," Peggy rolled her eyes. "I've not seen you act _that_ desperate in months, and this just so happens to occur on the same night that Summer had her first date in months?"

When Bucky's bewildered expression darkened and grew rather angered at that, Steve's brows furrowed and he asked, "Wait a minute. What am I missing?"

"I had my suspicions," Peggy told Bucky, ignoring Steve for the moment. "You're not nearly as subtle as you think you are, and Summer is about as mysterious as a giant flashing neon light."

Bucky rolled his eyes and slurred, "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I don't? Then please, enlighten me," she retorted.

He shrugged. "There's nothing to say."

Steve looked between his wife and best friend for a moment before asking Bucky, "So you and Summer...?"

"No," he immediately replied.

Peggy rolled her eyes again. "Yes."

"Fucking - no, okay? Dammit," Bucky groaned, dragging his hand over his face. "It was nothing."

"Six months of nothing? I find that hard to believe."

Drunk and past the point of caring when he was already found out, Bucky replied, "It was sex. That's all it was. It was all she wanted. Then she moved on once Jackass came along."

Peggy's eye twitched in a way that Steve knew signaled trouble. "Oh yes, that sounds perfectly believable. Summer, the most hopeless romantic we know, Summer who can't separate her feelings from a paper bag, Summer who has been pining over you for _two sodding years_ -"

Bucky's face scrunched up in confusion. "No she hasn't."

Peggy smacked the table and leaned back in exasperation, shaking her head at the ceiling. "I can't believe what I'm hearing."

"She doesn't... no," Bucky shook his head. "If she did she wouldn't have... she would have..."

"What? What would she have done?" Peggy asked. "This is a girl who finds ordering at Starbucks stressful, and you expect her to confess _her_ feelings to _you_?"

"You weren't there," Bucky replied dismissively. "Trust me. She had plenty of chances to say something and she didn't."

Peggy then turned to Steve and raised an eyebrow. "Darling, in the time that we've known Summer, have you ever gotten the feeling that perhaps she was quite taken with our friend here?"

Steve gave Bucky a tight smile and admitted, "Yeah, it was pretty obvious."

Bucky stared in disbelief.

"I second that," Sam said. "Girl's an open book, man."

Bucky glared at him next.

"Well, for your sake," Peggy sighed, "let's hope you haven't lost your chance with her entirely. I suggest you have an open and honest conversation with her before _Jackass_ as you call him gets too far with her."

"Wouldn't change anything," Bucky grumbled. "I was an idiot. She's better off without me anyway."

Every other person at the table groaned and made a face like they'd rather stab out their own eyes than hear where that comment would inevitably lead if he kept talking.

"Look, maybe you should let her be the judge of that," Steve told him. "She's a very... well... nervous person, and it sounds like the two of you have some pretty bad communication issues going on. Just talk to her."

"Yes," Peggy agreed, "or keep getting drunk and trying to pick up random ladies at the bar who might as well be cheap knockoffs of what you you really want. Honestly, James, sometimes I wonder how a man as brilliant as you can also be so incredibly _stupid_."

He then smiled bitterly and raised his drink to her in a mock toast. "Join the club, pal."

* * *

Bucky did _not_ go and find Summer and have that honest conversation with her. Instead, he decided to be a coward and just pretend like everything was fine and peachy and that he was super happy for her that she'd found someone that she liked so much. He had no idea what he was doing, but like Peggy said, he was stupid, so really he didn't know why anyone would expect otherwise.

Summer, meanwhile, kept working and kept seeing Jack. The event that they'd planned together took place and went _smashingly_ , and he continued to grow on her more with each day they spent together. He seemed like the perfect package, smart and funny _and_ hot, and she felt comfortable with him. It was a nice feeling.

Plus he was good at distracting her from the bizarre crapfest that was her friendship with Bucky, or the lack thereof. They saw each other in group settings sometimes and there was the occasional text, but for the most part she had a hard time figuring out what to even talk to him about half the time. Things had gotten painfully awkward and she blamed herself for it, but she didn't know how to fix it, so she didn't really try. She figured time was the best thing for them, and that this was likely simply an adjustment period.

Or something. Really, she had no earthly idea about _anything_.

What she _did_ know was that she really did like Jack. They were taking things slow and he respected that about her, and after a month of nothing but kisses, a handful of makeout sessions and somewhat cautious handsiness, Summer decided that she was ready to take the next step. She saw it as a way of exorcising Bucky from both her mind and her body to try to have that same physical connection with someone else, and if it worked, then maybe she'd finally feel truly free of him. Where was the harm in trying?

And so, a few days after the anniversary of their first date, Summer went over to Jack's very nice Manhattan apartment and cooked him an equally nice dinner. They talked and laughed and finished off a bottle of red wine that worked wonders for her nerves, and then afterwards they headed to his couch to watch a movie that he'd gotten for them. But they didn't make it thirty minutes in before the kissing started, and after she expressed her readiness to do a bit more than merely kiss and grope a bit on the couch, he happily obliged and took her to the bedroom.

At first, all was well. His bed felt nice and soft underneath her and he wasn't one to rush things, so he took his time in properly working her up and slowly undressing her. He was a great kisser and she appreciated that he took his time, and it kept her at ease through all the tamer stuff - touching, kissing, the warming up before the more significant things.

Plus he was hot and looked good with his shirt off, and that _always_ helped.

She thought that she was going to do just fine until he got her bra off. She wasn't expecting the sledgehammer to the heart that came when he groaned and dropped his head down to kiss all over her chest, which immediately made her brain unhelpfully flash before her eyes a vivid memory of Bucky doing the same thing. The difference was, when Bucky did this to her, he would do it with an unmatched level of enthusiasm and vocality that nobody could really live up to. He'd squeeze and grope her gently and then harder, rougher, almost enough to hurt before he'd bring his mouth down and make her almost lose it just from that, and all the while he'd be groaning and panting like he was enjoying it even more than she was.

Jack, however... he wasn't doing anything wrong or unpleasant, but he had a hell of a standard to live up to and he didn't even know it.

She tried to clear her mind and focus entirely on the present, and for a few moments, she was mostly successful. He started kissing her again and there was some slight grinding taking place between them, and it felt fine. She was fine. They were fine. She could do this.

Then his hand went between them and, as he continued to kiss the hell out of her, he tried to start up some more direct contact. She let him, opening her legs a little to help him out, and when his fingers first brushed over her, it was pleasant enough. She thought that was encouraging. This could totally work.

He kissed her neck as the touching got a bit more serious. She closed her eyes and focused on the feelings and the sensations, wanting so badly to make it work that she knew she'd be devastated if it didn't.

He wasn't bad at what he was doing. He was gentle and slow about it, and if it had been a year ago, she would have thought that it was one of the best things she'd ever felt from a man. But it _wasn't_ a year ago and she had felt far better things from one particular man.

Also, Jack was quiet. In fact, he seemed to never make so much as a peep. Even his heavier breathing wasn't very audible, and while she supposed it wasn't a big deal, she was used to a lot more noise and also a _lot_ of talking, like when Bucky would be doing this very same thing to her and his mouth would be at her ear as he said something like " _Like that, baby? I can tell, you're fucking soaked. God you feel so good.._."

Her accidental fantasy - or memory, really - had the unintended consequence of making a sudden jolt of pleasure fly straight to where Jack's hand was, and she realized then that she could not, in fact, do this. Not one bit.

"Wait, wait," she said breathlessly, grabbing his arm and pushing him away.

"What's wrong?" He asked, brows furrowed as he hovered over her and kept his hands away. "Did I do something or -"

"No, no," she shook her head, a little breathless. "No, you're fine. It's just... it's um..."

"You're not ready for this?" he guessed.

She shook her head. "No." She paused. "I don't know."

He released a heavy sigh and nodded, rolling off of her and sitting back on his heels. She suddenly felt exposed like that, being in just her underwear, so she sat up as well and let her long hair cover most of her chest, not caring if it was silly or not.

"I'm sorry," she told him cautiously, trying to tell if he was upset or not.

"Well, it's been a month, Summer," he replied a little more snippy of a tone than she would have expected. "I've been patient but _damn_."

"... Damn _what_?"

"I want an adult relationship, Summer," he replied. "If you're not ready then that's fine, but when _are_ you going to be ready?"

She stared at him in slight disbelief for a moment before slapping an arm over her chest and getting off the bed, immediately starting to pick up her clothes from the floor.

"Wait, Summer, I - that came out wrong."

"No, it came out fine," she said, turning her back to him as she put her bra back on. "You want sex and I'm not an adult if I'm not ready to have it yet."

"Oh, _Jesus_ ," he grumbled, getting off the bed and reaching for her. "Can you calm down a minute before you freak out and -"

"No," she said, turning around and giving him a humorless smile. "This is what I do. I freak out. I freak out all the time and I'm weird and I make stupid decisions and sometimes I'm not ready for things right away, okay? And I think you're a nice guy, I do, and I like you but it's not okay to pressure someone about sex. _Ever_."

His eyes went wide as she continued getting dressed. "Pressure? I've waited a whole month to even get your shirt off! Do you have any idea how long that is for me?"

 _How nice_. "I'm not talking about the last month, although hold on while I cry you a river," she rolled her eyes. "I'm talking about just now. And if you think you can't have an adult relationship without having sex within the first month, then maybe you're the one who hasn't had an actual adult relationship."

He laughed a bit sarcastically. "And you have?"

Buttoning up her shirt and deciding that underneath all of that charm he was actually pretty much a jerk, she replied, "I know that a real relationship means caring about each other and trusting each other and only wanting something if the other person wants it too. Anything else is just... cheap. And not something I want."

She knew that, she realized, because of the very man that she had come here to get over. Even though they'd never been in a true "relationship" by most standards, Bucky had treated her in a way that no other man ever had. She trusted him with her _everything_ , just as he did with her.

Not only had he absolutely ruined her for other men when it came to sex, but she was now sure that she was ruined in every other way as well.

"Look," Jack said, a little more soberly, "why don't we just... take it easy and talk about it in the morning, okay? I didn't mean to make you feel pressured or... childish. I didn't mean it that way."

She sighed, looking him over and realizing that as well as she had gotten along with him and had a genuinely good time up until now, she felt absolutely nothing for him. Not a thing.

"To be honest," she replied quietly, "there's someone that I can't get over. I've tried, but... I can't get past this guy, and it sucks because he just sees me as a... really good friend, so screw me, but... there it is." She shrugged. "And you deserve better than that, so... we should probably just say we had a good time and... move on."

He responded by putting his hands on his hips and blowing out a heavy breath. "Well. This isn't how I expected the night to go."

She laughed. Yeah. Life's a bitch like that, isn't it."

* * *

 _So let me get this straight_ , the text from Natasha read, _you're sitting on her doorstep waiting for her to come back from her date so you can sweep her off her feet?_

Bucky chuckled softly to himself and typed back, _No, I'm sitting on her doorstep waiting for her to come back from her date so that I can apologize in person for being such an ass for the last month_.

He looked up towards the street, sitting on the second lowest step outside of her apartment building and absently watching the cars drive by. The truth was, he felt like a crappy person and even crappier friend for how he'd handled the whole situation up until this point. He loved Summer and he wanted her for himself, but without her presence in his life as a friend, there'd been a big empty hole that he couldn't fill without her. He needed to grow up and accept reality for what it was, and if they could only be friends, then so be it.

In the same vein, if he was patient and waited to see how her current relationship would end up, maybe he'd have another shot. But even if he didn't, he just needed her back in his life in any way that he could get her. He couldn't take anymore of the awkward small talk or avoiding each other for no good reason.

His phone buzzed with a new text. _Well you might be waiting awhile. She said she was taking things to the "next level" with her guy tonight_.

He closed his eyes and stifled a mixture of anger and incredible frustration upon reading those words. The thought of that man, that _jackass_ touching her and _having_ her...

He took a deep breath through his nose and out his mouth. If he lingered on that thought for too long, he'd find something breakable and smash it with his bare hands.

Just on the off chance that Summer would in fact return to her own place rather than spend the night in the bed of a jackass, Bucky hung out awhile longer on the steps. He was glad that he did so when about 20 minutes later, a taxi came to a halt in front of the building and the woman that he was waiting for stepped out of it. His mood instantly brightened at the implication.

She didn't notice him until she started walking towards the steps herself. When she did, she slowed to a halt and said with surprise, "Bucky?"

"Hey," he smiled, standing up and putting his hands in his pockets.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, returning his smile but keeping a safe distance from him.

"Couple reasons," he shrugged. "Mainly because I miss you and I wanted to see you. And I wanted to apologize for being a dumbass."

She chuckled and then asked quietly, "What about?"

"Things have been awkward," he admitted. "It's my fault. But I don't want it to be like that anymore. I miss you. I miss my friend."

She exhaled then, as if she had been expecting to hear something else entirely, and he wondered if she didn't seem... disappointed. "Yeah, I've missed you too. I wish you'd come over earlier though. It's late and I've had a... well, I've had a _day_ , let's just say that."

"Rough date?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound too hopeful.

She laughed humorlessly. "You have no idea."

"Well, I've got nowhere else to be," he shrugged. "We can go up and you can tell me all about it."

She seemed to think for a moment. Then she smiled and gave in. "All right. Let's go."

* * *

Suddenly, after having broke it off with Jack, now Summer had the man behind all of her angst in her apartment, and she had to act calm and normal and not at all like she was about to lose her mind.

When she had first seen him sitting there on the steps and then heard him start apologizing, her heart performed a gymnastic flip that ended up being for nothing. It wasn't a grand romantic gesture like she had stupidly hoped for a moment. It was just Bucky trying to get things back to the way things were before.

But she was starting to think that was simply impossible at this stage.

He followed her around her apartment as she straightened up, tossing dishes in the sink that she would have taken care of earlier had she known she was going to have company.

"So, wanna tell me about the date?"

"Not... really, no," she replied with a faint shrug as she picked up a cup from an end table in her living room and headed to the kitchen with it.

He followed, of course. "That bad?"

"No." She paused and dumped out the cup and then let it clank to the sink. "Well... yeah, kind of."

"What happened?"

She sighed and leaned against the counter, facing him but trying to avoid direct eye contact. "Well, I broke it off with him by the end of the date, so..."

Bucky's eyebrows shot up towards his hairline. "You did?"

She nodded. "Yup."

"Now I _have_ to know what happened," he said with both concern and a slight smile.

Summer sighed and dragged herself off towards the living room. "Then I'm gonna need to sit down."

After they were both seated on her couch - sitting at a normal, friendly distance from each other, which seemed to be a very conscience decision for them both - Summer glanced at the expectant look on his face and sighed. "If you're expecting something juicy, it wasn't like that."

"So you didn't find a sex dungeon in his apartment and run the other way?"

She laughed and shook her head. "No. No sex dungeon. It was more of a... mutual... well, no, it wasn't really mutual. It was pretty much all me." She took a breath and elaborated, "He's a nice guy and he's cute, but... I don't feel anything for him. And he was ready to start sleeping together and I thought I was too, but..."

"But?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. It's not like there's anything _wrong_ with him. I did like him, but I'm starting to think that maybe I'm just one of those people who can't have sex with someone unless I actually feel something for them."

As soon as the words left her mouth, horror overcame her. She froze and her ears started to burn as she realized what she might have just inadvertently confessed to.

 _Oh God_.

She looked at Bucky after a moment spent cringing, finding him staring at her in what looked like confusion.

Why did she do things like this to herself? Why couldn't she just keep her stupid mouth shut and...

"So it's over?" Bucky asked quietly.

Summer nodded, trying to will her still-hot blush to go away. "Yeah, it's over."

"Did you... how far did he get with you?"

Summer furrowed her brows and slowly forced herself to look him in the eye. After what she had just said and implied, _that's_ what he wanted to know? "Seriously?"

He blinked, genuinely surprised by her tone. "What?"

Summer turned away and laughed. And then she kept laughing. God, this was all hilarious, in a decidedly _not_ funny sort of way.

Now he was even more confused. "Summer, what?"

"Nothing," she shook her head as the giggles faded away. She stood up and crossed her arms, not having a particular destination in mind but needing to pace for some reason. Bucky, of course, got up to follow her. "Nothing at all."

"All right, well, I'm not a mind reader so you're gonna have to -"

She turned around and looked him in the eye, both of them standing in the middle of the living room as she retorted, "You're not? I didn't know that. I thought you only had a problem understanding super obvious things that are right in front of your face."

He looked so bewildered that she genuinely wanted to smack him a little. "Summer, what are you talking about?"

"Nothing," she shrugged. "You know what? I'm tired. Can you just... go ahead and go home?"

The furrow in his brow didn't go away, but he clenched his jaw slightly and she tried not to think about how hot she found that. "No."

" _No_?"

" _Yes_ , no, not until you tell me what the hell's going on," he replied, visibly becoming more agitated.

"What's going on is everything sucks, I dumped my boyfriend because he's a jerk and _you_ are the biggest idiot in the entire city," she said, essentially word-vomiting and nowhere near done just yet.

"What did _I_ do?" he asked desperately, face scrunched up and hands starting to flail for emphasis. "All I did was show up here and say I'm sorry for being an ass and then -"

"You're still being one!" she half-yelled back. "My God, Bucky, is it really not that obvious? Do I need to spell it out in all caps for you like a five year old?"

"Spell _what_ out for me?"

Her adrenaline was suddenly pumping now that this moment she had dreamed about for years had possibly arrived, the moment where she was going to confess all to him and lay it on the line regardless of his reaction. It was now or never, fight or flight, and yet the words still got stuck in her throat.

He watched her carefully, and he saw the moment that her courage faltered. Hoping against hope that she was on the verge of saying what he wanted to hear with every fiber of his being, he dropped his voice down and said much more quietly, "I have to hear you say it to believe it."

Her eyes snapped up to his in surprise. "What?"

"If you..." Suddenly nervous, he licked his lips and half-stammered, "If you're about to say what I'm hoping you are, I have to hear it. I can't just... I can't take other people's word for it or convince myself, I have to... I've gotta hear it from you."

 _He knew_. She swallowed a lump in her suddenly dry throat and said, "If I say it then it'll change everything and..."

"Everything's already changed," he replied, lifting his arms and letting them fall. "Look at us, Summer."

She felt tears threatening to start falling, which was just _great_. "I know and I _hate_ this. I hate everything being weird between us and I've missed you _so much_..."

He was suddenly closer now, his hand gently cupping the side of her face, and yet she couldn't stand to look him in the eye. "I know. I miss you too."

His voice was low and comforting, sweet, genuine. It made her heart ache. "I just feel so stupid because this turned into a mess and I care about you so much and..."

"I care about you too," he said, still touching her, trying to angle her head so that she was forced to look at him, but she didn't let him just yet.

"I tried to just... forget," she rambled as a tear escaped her eye. "I tried to like that guy and be normal and get on with my life but no matter what I did it wasn't the same and... it's torture, you know? Just no matter what I do, it didn't change anything because I..."

"I love you."

Those were the words that _she_ had been trying so hard to choke out. Her wide eyes flew up to his, her mouth open as she nearly went into a state of genuine shock. Did he really just say that? Because if not and she heard wrong or he was screwing with her, she knew she'd never recover from _that_.

"What?" she muttered dumbly.

"You heard me," he said quietly, tucking her hair behind her ear and staring at her like she held his entire fate in her hands.

"But..." She closed her eyes and then muttered, "I swear to God, if you're just screwing with me -"

"I'm not, I'm not," he assured her, bringing both of his hands to her face and this time succeeding in making her look at him. "I promise you, I'm not."

"But I'm just your friend," she said. "You've... over and over, you always made it _really_ clear that you only saw me as -"

"I know, I'm an idiot," he told her sincerely, briefly resting his forehead on hers. Her hands were on his arms, holding on for dear life, and she had no idea when she had done that. "I'm sorry."

He was telling her everything that she had wanted to hear for so long, but yet she found that she couldn't quite accept it. Not that easily, anyway.

She pried herself out of his grip and took a few steps back. "Where's this coming from? Are you just jealous? Is that why you asked me what all I did with him? Because if you're only saying this so that we'll go back to how we were before..."

"No, no, God, Summer," he shook his head firmly while respecting her sudden need for space. "I don't want to go back to that. And _yeah_ I was jealous, but I asked how far he got with you because the thought of him touching you makes me wanna rip his fucking head off."

Summer shook her head, trying to poke holes in this new development any way that she could as a desperate last-ditch measure of self-preservation. "But why didn't you feel like this before? If you're only doing this because I ended it and now you want me because you can't have me -"

Bucky looked utterly miserable as he tried to convince her otherwise. " _No_. No, I swear that's not it."

"Then _what_? Because everything was normal until I started dating again and now suddenly -"

"No it wasn't," he shook his head. "Nothing was normal. I knew I loved you but I didn't think you wanted what I wanted."

Her jaw nearly hit the floor. "Are you kidding me?"

"No!"

Summer was... absolutely and 100% blown away. They stood there in silence then, staring at each other speechless until Summer found her voice again.

"So what you're telling me is... we're complete and utter idiots."

He shrugged. "Well, _I_ am, that's for fucking sure."

Her entire world reeling, Summer suddenly flopped down on the couch and dropped her head into her hands. Bucky followed almost immediately, sitting next to her and sitting close enough that he was pressed just slightly against her.

After taking a moment, she raised her head and asked him, "Since when?" At his puzzled expression, she added, "When did you stop seeing me as just a friend?"

He looked away and ran a hand through his hair, letting out a deep breath before he gave his answer. "You've always been special to me. I just... I never thought you could love me like that. You know better than almost anyone how fucked up I am," he muttered. "So I just... told myself you were just my friend and I tried to be content with that. But I don't think I ever even knew the half of what I felt for you until this one night."

"Which night?" she asked, desperate to know.

He glanced at her and smiled. "Remember that bad day I had awhile back, where I was being stupid and you came over with food and movies and kept me company?"

She thought for a moment and then said, "Oh, right. _Silver Linings Playbook_."

He nodded. "You had done that for me I don't know how many times, but... it just... hit me that night. Hit me right when we were... whatever you want to call what we did on my couch..."

She smiled and blushed a little when he smiled back at her. "Right, um... _that_."

"Yeah. I still didn't think that you could love me and I still think I'm too screwed up and that you deserve better, but that was when I knew."

She furrowed her brows, taking great issue with what he said but having to focus on one thing at a time for now. "Why didn't you just say something?"

"Probably for the same reason you didn't," he replied. "I was scared. I didn't think you felt that way about me, but apparently everybody we know knew from the start..."

Her eyes widened. " _They did_?"

"Peggy said you're as mysterious as a giant neon sign or something," Bucky shrugged.

She made a mental note to attempt and fail to beat Peggy up later. "Oh."

"Yeah, so..." He trailed off for a moment, thinking and staring at his hands. "Then when you told me you wanted to start dating again, I figured that was it. Best thing to do was just let you go and let you be happy."

"I was miserable," she told him quietly. "I went home and cried for two days."

"I broke half my dishes and punched a hole in my wall," he replied.

That settled it, she thought. They were definitely both idiots. Pretty substantial ones, too.

She suddenly stood up again, needing to move around as if motion would help her brain think more easily. Bucky looked up and watched her as she paced with her hands on her hips. "Okay, so... what does all of this mean? Like... what are we going to do about it?"

He blinked. "I... well... I guess that's... up to you. Depends on what you want."

"What I wa- _seriously_? Because I think you know what I want and that's the problem," she said, still pacing. "I know what I want but after months and months of hoping and praying and having my heart ripped out over and over, I'm having a hard time believing what I'm hearing even though I _want_ to. It's just... you have no idea what I've been through with you and what I've felt and how much it hurt to..."

He was on his feet before she could finish her sentence, crowding her space again and this time making her stop pacing by gently gripping her arms in gentle hands. "I know. I'm so sorry."

"No, you don't know," she shook her head. "You have no idea. You would make me feel so good and so _special_ and like I was the center of the fricking universe, and then by the time the sun came up I'd just be your buddy again. You'd call me _baby_ and _sweetheart_ and then turn around and flirt with other girls in front of me, and you have no idea what that did to me."

He winced and closed his eyes, cupping her face again and whispering, "I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry. I'm an idiot, I'm worthless - just tell me what to say or what to do to make it better."

"You're _not_ worthless," she assured him, but he didn't seem to hear her.

"Do you want me to get on my knees and beg you to forgive me 'cause if it'll help I will," he told her earnestly, looking her in the eyes. "Just say anything, Summer, and I swear I'll do it."

She shook her head, her arms finding their way around his neck as their foreheads touched and he continued to stare at her almost desperately, hanging on her every word. "It wasn't all your fault. It was mine too. I've loved you forever," she admitted with a small smile, and she'd never forget the relieved and emotional way that he looked at her as she finally said those words. "I should have... known better. Should have just told you from the start and then I could have saved us all the -"

He kissed her before she could finish her sentence. It took her by surprise, and she let out a breathless sound against his lips that, to her surprise, seemed to make him make a low, needy sound of his own.

After a long, blissful moment, he broke the kiss and, their foreheads pressed together, he told her, "You always make that sound when I first kiss you."

"I do?" she asked in somewhat of a daze.

"Ever since the first time, yeah," he murmured, thumbs tracking her cheekbones.

"Well, when you imagine what something would be like over and over for... a really long time and then it finally happens," she shrugged lightly. "Guess I never got used to it."

"I'm so sorry," he told her for what felt like the thousandth time. "If I'd known I swear it would have been different. I never would have used you like that. I never ever wanted to hurt you. It was the last thing I ever thought I'd do and..."

"It's okay," she told him quietly, soothingly running her fingers through the back of his hair. "It's as much my fault as it is yours."

" _No_ ," he shook his head vehemently. " _No_ it's not. Please, Summer, tell me what to do to make it up to you. I'll do anything, I swear. I'll -"

This time it was her turn to shush him with a kiss. He immediately clutched her tighter, making a desperate sound himself as she kissed him and started to wonder if any of this was even real. Maybe she'd wake up any minute and find out it was all a dream and that everything was still the same as it had always been.

The kiss was both slow and frantic, Bucky holding her like he was just as fearful as she was that she'd just disappear and everything would fall apart. They broke apart only for him to pant an inch from her mouth, "Tell me, Summer, tell me what to do."

Looking into his eyes and feeling like she just might burst, she replied, "Tell me you love me again."

"I love you," he half-whispered without a hint of hesitation. "I love you so much. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

Heart soaring despite having been smashed to pieces just weeks ago, she replied a little shakily, "Me too. And," she added, tracing the lines of his face that she had grown to know so well, "I know you think nobody can love you but you're wrong. _I_ love you."

Somewhere between a smile and a grimace, he gave away how much those words meant the world to him while also scaring the hell out of him. "I'm a mess, Summer. I don't know what I'm doing. Sometimes I can barely take care of myself let alone anyone else."

"I know," she nodded. "That's where I'd come in. We've always taken pretty good care of each other. Wouldn't be any different like this."

"You sure?" he asked with a tiny smile, clearly desperate to accept what she was proposing.

She nodded. "Only one way to find out."

He grinned, and she smiled back before closing her eyes as he kissed her again. It felt different than before somehow, and she felt different too - lighter, relieved, and actually calm for the first time in a _very_ long time.

This, she thought, was what it must feel like to stop living a lie and be completely honest for once. And maybe this was also what it felt like to be in love and not absolutely hate it.

After that, neither of them could get close enough fast enough. Still kissing in that slow but frenzied way, needing to feel each other and be constantly assured that they were really there and not just a figment of their respective imaginations, Bucky first began to steer her back towards the couch. But when she shook her head, he understood what she wanted and instead, they ended up in the very familiar safe haven of her bedroom. This time, however, things went quite differently.

He shut her door behind them with his foot, the only light coming from streetlights flowing inside through the two windows in her room. He never thought to turn on the lights and neither did she, both of them singularly focused on the other and getting to bed as quickly as possible, but not necessarily for the most obvious reasons. She got him on the bed first, only their shoes off as she climbed on his lap and kissed the hell out of him.

" _God_ ," he groaned softly between kisses, hands all over her and aching to get closer. The sound of his voice made her shiver, and she broke away to look at him in the low light.

"Did you see anyone?" she asked him quietly, slightly afraid of the answer. "While we weren't..."

"No," he shook his head. "Nobody."

It wasn't fair of her to ask, since she had been seeing someone the whole time, but she just needed to know. He started kissing her neck and unbuttoning her shirt, and once it was open and he had pulled it from her shoulders, he drew away to ask, "Did he touch you?"

Keeping fully in mind that she had done nothing wrong and that she knew he wasn't asking to be accusatory or ridiculous, she met his gaze and admitted, "A little."

She saw both sadness and jealousy in his eyes at her answer. His hands sliding down her sides, he then asked, "Did you like it?"

"I tried to," she replied. "I really did. I thought it would get you out of my system and make me feel better, but all it did was make me think of you and how much better you are than he is."

He kissed her hard then, hard enough to make her moan and then almost lose her head when he flipped her down on the bed without breaking the kiss.

"You thought about me while you were with him?" he asked lowly when they stopped to take a breath.

She nodded. "That's why I stopped it. I couldn't do that to myself. You ruined me for any other man and I don't think you even know it."

Her words and admissions bringing out the possessive, slightly darker side of him, he replied, "I do now."

She clawed his shirt off before he leaned down to kiss her again. His next question came as a rough groan against her lips, a little less forgiving than before. "Did you touch him?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Were you in his bed?"

She nodded. He growled and kissed her again, and the strange thrill that she felt from his reactions to her to answers took her by surprise.

"Did he take your clothes off?" he asked as he reached between them to undo her pants and start pulling them off.

"Bucky, why are you -"

"Just answer me," he said lowly, half order and half plea.

She sighed, giving in. "Yes."

He almost ripped her pants off at that point. "How much?"

"I... almost everything," she said before he flung her pants to the floor and then groaned before pressing his mouth to her belly. Her hands in his hair, she closed her eyes and couldn't believe that her night had gone from pure crap to pure bliss. Bucky took the opportunity to quickly rid himself of the rest of his clothes before immediately turning all of his attention back to her.

He kissed his way up, looking up at her as he kissed the tops of her breasts over the cups of her bra, and then once he reached her jaw, he said, "You told me you thought about me while you were with him. Tell me exactly what you thought."

Her face was on fire and she wanted to squirm and try to get out of it, but she knew any attempt would be futile. He pulled down both straps of her bra and tugged it down until it was at the top of her waist, but he didn't break eye contact as his hands quickly busied themselves with massaging and lightly squeezing her breasts.

"I... he was... trying... but he was so quiet," she said, closing her eyes and arching into his touch. "You're always loud and you moan and you _say things_ and I love that so much."

He grinned. "That's what you thought about?"

"That and how much better your fingers feel," she admitted, wrapping an arm around his neck and using it as leverage to push them both up so that they were sitting.

He watched her heatedly as she took off the bra she was still haphazardly wearing, and then she was back in his lap and in his arms as she kissed him with a familiar but no less intense passion. Her hips rolling slowly against his as they kissed, it wasn't long before he was panting and groaning softly just as he had in her ill-timed fantasy earlier, only this time it was real and so much _better_ than she even remembered it being before. She had no doubt that it was because this was the first time they were doing this as real, committed lovers.

Breaking the kiss and then trailing his lips down to her neck, Summer took a tight fistful of his hair and pulled enough to make him moan and falter for a moment. But then he _bit_ at her, softly but hard enough to sting, and after he soothed the bite with his tongue, he nuzzled her neck and groaned roughly, " _Mine_."

That one single word nearly made her lose her mind on the spot. She moaned shakily before he raised his head, looking her in the eye as his hand moved between them and his fingers slowly, teasingly dipped into the front lace of her panties. It was the softest of touches, but his eyes gave away the strength of his intent as he repeated, " _Mine_." She shuddered, knowing what this was - he was claiming her, and she wanted that more than she wanted _anything_.

She closed her eyes and her breathing was a mess as he touched her, her head tipping back as he kissed everywhere that his mouth could reach in their current position. She rocked against his hand and savored every last sensation, greedily taking everything he gave her and kissing back desperately every time his mouth touched hers. She was so wound up and so _happy_ that it felt like one moment he was just getting started and then the next, she was seconds from falling apart.

"Go on," he murmured in her ear, his free hand splayed on her back and helping to steady her as she rode his hand. "Come for me, sweetheart. _Only_ for me."

And so, with a breathless, shaky and long-lasting gasp, she did. It rolled over her in waves, slow-building and sweet and everything she had really only ever felt when she was with him. Her eyes fluttered open when it was over, her breath labored and cheeks flushed as she found him staring at her with unhidden lust and _so_ much more. He leaned in and kissed her softly.

"Only for me," he repeated as he drew away, making sure that she had heard him.

She nodded, squirming at the way that his fingers were still slightly moving against her. "Only you."

He then pulled his hand away and laid her down on her back again. Her head falling back on her pillow, she watched as he slowly crept up her body while maintaining searing and stiflingly hot direct eye contact with her all the while. The undying blush on her face grew exponentially brighter when he slipped two of his fingers into his mouth and hummed lowly with appreciation at her lingering taste, his eyes never leaving hers. He knew exactly how to set her on fire all over again.

"I've missed that," he murmured, dropping his head down and kissing between her breasts. "Missed your taste, your scent... _God_ , I've missed everything about you..."

He then switched course and started kissing _down_ rather than up, kisses growing more open mouthed the farther he went. She squirmed with anticipation all the while, still sensitive but ready for more and telling him as much by helpfully swinging one of her legs over his shoulders once he was low enough to nip at her hipbone. He glanced up at her and grinned, asking with his lips still against her skin, "Ready?"

"God yes," she half-moaned, only to have her eagerness answered with a painstakingly slow and teasing trail of kisses down her hips, her inner thighs all the way to her knees and back up again, leaving her nearly ready to scream by the time that he finally gave in and satisfied both of their needs. But it was even better for how long he had spent building it up, and she really did almost scream by the time he _finally_ put his mouth on her.

Some small, perpetually ignored part of her brain had spent the last month convinced that she'd never get to have this again, a man devoting his full and complete attention to satisfying her in this way, and yet now she here and was once again in the hands of the best lover she'd ever had. And not only was he as skilled and enthusiastic about it as he had ever been, but now there was an honestly and emotion underneath it all that made it not only enjoyable but _joyful_ , and that was brand new. It also only served to make everything even more heightened and intense, to the point where she was falling apart within what felt to her like mere _seconds_.

But he didn't mind how eager or sensitive she was. In fact, he relished in it and took advantage of it, not stopping until he lost count of how many more times he made her see stars. He watched her, his left hand holding her right through the most intense of it, his thumb swiping tenderly below her knuckles as she squeezed his hand with every new pulse of pleasure from his mouth.

He only gave her a break once she physically pushed him away instead of holding him close, breathlessly moaning for him to stop and squirming away. He let her now-uselessly limp leg fall off of his shoulder and flop to the bed, her body covered in a light sheen of sweat and her eyes closed as she tried catch her breath. Satisfied with his work, he gave her one last kiss before slowly making his way back up and nudging her nose with his to get her attention.

"Like that?" he asked teasingly, her eyes opening and looking at him both heatedly and incredulously. He kissed her lips softly, just a gentle touch, and her hand unexpectedly grasping and softly stroking him took him by surprise.

"I loved it," she replied, kissing the corner of his mouth, "and I love you."

"I'll never get sick of hearing you say that," he admitted, a low little grown leaving his throat when he thrusted a bit into her hand.

"This is real, right?" she asked him, eyes shining with unshed tears from both the constant assault of pleasure and the emotion underneath it all. "I'm not gonna wake up and be here alone and everything back to normal?"

He shook his head, taking her hand and pulling it off of him so he could lift it and place it next to her head on her pillow. "It's real," he assured her. "And I'm not going anywhere."

"Better not," she grinned before leaning up and kissing him, her legs sliding up and around his hips to make her intent unmistakable. His hand slid from her thigh down to her knee, lifting it higher and aligning them better, and she pushed up against him a bit impatiently. He, however, grasped her leg and held it firmly in place, not letting her move.

"Slow this time," he murmured, eyes moving from her lips to her eyes. "Not fast. Not... not what we normally do. I wanna do this right."

She nodded, swallowing quickly and understanding exactly what he meant. He was feeling the same thing that she was feeling, the need to make sure that the night lived up to its meaning and did justice to it outweighed everything else. He touched his lips to hers again, kissing her softly and sweetly and _slowly_ , setting a tone that was just as new for her as it was for him.

"I don't deserve you," he whispered against the corner of her mouth. "I really don't."

" _Shh_ ," she hushed him, bringing two fingertips to his lips. His eyes met hers as she smiled and shook her head. "Don't do that. Not now."

He nodded lightly, and she knew that his self-doubt and other issues wouldn't be going away anytime soon. But that was okay, because she was bringing her own baggage to this new relationship, too. They could be half-broken and messed up together.

She brought his lips down back to hers, and then they were lost again. Kissing turned into passionate touching and languid, hot sliding of skin and friction that wasn't enough, until she was ready to beg and he couldn't hold back anymore. One breathily whispered _please_ from her lips had him finally taking her at last, sliding within her slowly and carefully and making her sigh with relief while he closed his eyes and exhaled harshly in a struggle to stay in control.

She ran her hands over his arms, his shoulders, his back and his neck, fingers finding a home in his hair as she matched each of his initial slow, measured movements with her own. She watched his eyes shut tight and his breathing come out short and labored for a moment, but finally he seemed to gain full control and he opened his eyes as he began to move a little faster and surer. She shivered at the change, meeting his gaze and moaning softly when she lifted her hips enough that he hit her _just_ right.

"You're so beautiful," he murmured, his hands cupping her face as he leaned his weight on his elbows on the bed. " _Look at you._ "

"No, _you_ ," she managed to breathe out. Then he lifted her leg a bit higher and her eyes rolled shut at a new shudder of pleasure that made her toes curl.

He kept moving like that, languid and measured but deep and perfect, and when she was back on the edge again, he pulled her close and rolled them over. She wasted no time once she was on top, balancing her palms on his chest and picking up exactly where he'd left off, fully controlling their rhythm this time.

He stared at her like she was a goddess, in awe of how her hips rolled and her hair swayed in her face and how she'd close her eyes and gasp when something felt _especially_ good. He ran his hands everywhere, touching every inch of skin that he could until her nails bit down into his chest and she let her head fall back as she moaned with pure and utter bliss. Every clench of her body and tremble of her thighs pressed against his hips felt like heaven, but he wasn't ready to let go himself just yet.

He turned them over again, placing himself back on top of her as she panted and came down from her high. He kissed her and resumed the pace that she had set before she had lost it, with long and deep thrusts that weren't rushed or frenzied at all. They both felt so much more than they ever had before, every inch of skin that touched and dragged and rocked together feeling electric and incredibly intense. And through it all, they kissed and touched like real lovers and not the confused, sometimes scared friends that they had been before.

With one arm on the bed next to Summer's head for support and his other trailing up and down her body, over her side and along her breast and then over her neck to her face so he could cradle it as he kissed her, Bucky felt his self control begin to splinter. Everything felt too good, too heavy, and he couldn't help but open his mouth and let out his adoration for the woman beneath him.

"I love you," he murmured, groaning with each meeting of their hips. He dragged his lips down her jaw to her ear, where he murmured, "I love you so fucking much it _hurts_."

She wrapped her arms around him, her entire body wrapped around his by that point, and she moaned near his own ear, "I'm finally _not_ hurting at all."

He raised his head then, looking down at her and feeling his heart skip at the sight of tears in her eyes. She smiled and it made his chest feel like it might burst. She just looked so incredibly _happy_... and it had been so long since he had seen her like that.

He smiled back, and the tears that had been building behind Summer's eyes dropped on to her cheeks in two steady streams, and it was all because of the real, genuine joy on his face. She could truthfully say that she'd never seen him so happy or full of emotion, and it was an amazing look on him. He looked younger and lighter, less weighed down by the demons in his past, and she knew that she'd do anything to keep seeing him like that.

"One more time," he murmured, changing the angle a bit again and making it incredible for her. "Come with me, sweetheart."

It was an easy order to follow. Just seconds later, high on emotion and their physical connection that went far beyond anything they'd ever felt before, Summer let herself go one last time and Bucky followed soon after with a gasp that became a long and strained moan. Every nerve in his body came alive and it felt all the more powerful for how slowly and lovingly it had built, and the whole time, they were forehead to forehead and as close as they could be.

The blissful, quiet moments after were spent in a mutual state of exhausted awe. Bucky stayed on top of of her for a bit, Summer not minding the weight at all, but soon he moved and all but collapsed on the other side of the bed. He reached for her at the same moment that she reached for him, and then she was in his arms again, warm and safe and _amazingly_ happy.

Summer felt like she was floating on cloud nine. What had begun as a poorly-conceived mess had turned out beautifully, so unexpectedly perfectly, and her heart finally felt whole once again. One night wouldn't erase all the hurt and the heartache that she had been through, but at least for that night in that moment, she was whole and she was happy.

And maybe, just _maybe_ , so was Bucky.

"Should have done that a long time ago," he murmured, lips pressed to the top of her head.

She giggled. "Yeah... but it was worth the wait."

"Yeah it was," he agreed, his fingers starting to run slowly through her hair and making her eyes close. "It really... _really_... was."

She moaned quietly and said, "Keep doing that."

He smiled and happily obliged. "Getting sleepy already?"

"Well," she replied without bothering to open her eyes, "I got up early for work today and got off late, and then I had a date that ended pretty badly, and then..."

He grinned, looking up at the ceiling. "And then?"

"And then I came home and found this really hot, sweet guy waiting for me on the steps. He kept me up past my bedtime sweet talking me and wearing me out."

"Lucky guy," Bucky mused.

"Yeah," she agreed. "But I'm the luckiest one."

He shook his head, closing his eyes. "Impossible."

"Don't think so," she yawned. "Go to sleep, Bucky. We're gonna need out strength for when our friends find out and have a field day making fun of us for the rest of our lives."

"They're gonna give us hell," Bucky agreed.

She yawned. "Yeah. But we kinda deserve it."

"Well, like you said," he replied just before drifting off, "we're pretty much idiots."

She laughed sleepily, and then sleep overtook them both.

* * *

The following morning, Bucky awoke with the sun as he usually did. But this time, unlike most mornings, he awoke from a dreamless sleep feeling truly tested for once. He savored the feeling, knowing better than to take such a thing for granted.

Lying next to him was Summer, the woman that he had loved for very long, looking the way that he imagined an angel would as she slept. She was on her side, facing away from him and covered by just a thin sheet pulled up to her chest. The morning sunlight looked gorgeous on her pale skin, all warm and, dare he say it, _romantic_ as the sun bathed her in its soft rays.

Before he knew it, he found himself genuinely watching a woman sleep for the first time in his life.

He reached out and ran the back of two fingers down her upper arm, watching goosebumps arise in their wake though the touch didn't wake her. He smiled to himself, hardly able to believe how damn good he felt.

It had been so long since he had allowed himself a shred of real happiness that he'd almost forgotten what it felt like. Being this happy again was as frightening as it was incredible, but one very important thing kept him from even thinking about running. And that was the future, or more specifically, the future that he could see now when he looked at Summer.

Thinking about the future and the unknowns within it had always had a way of frightening him, but now when he imagined what it might be like with this woman by his side... he could see it. It felt right. And though there were a thousand different paths they could take and a thousand more that might not necessarily end the way that he hoped they would, one in particular stood out and played out in his head like a movie.

As he watched the even, rhythmic rising and falling of her chest, he saw the next few months playing out with ups and downs. It was only natural, but the good times would always outweigh the bad. They'd fall harder in love and, if Bucky knew himself at all, he'd rush to make her his own in the most permanent way that a man could. He'd take Steve and Natasha and... well, probably the whole gang and drag them to the best jewelry store that he could afford, and they'd help him pick out a ring worthy of this incredible woman. But he wouldn't give it to her right away. He'd hang on to that ring and wait for the right moment, wait until Summer was ready to be asked such a huge question. That day might come in a week, a month, or maybe even a year, and that would be fine. He'd be patient, even though he'd know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was the _one_ and there was nobody else.

Then, when the time was finally right, he'd get down on one knee and ask her to marry him in a way that would make his mama proud. She'd say yes and they'd kiss and they'd be so happy that they couldn't see straight. A whirlwind of planning and dresses and cakes would go by in a flash and then they'd finally say their vows before God and the most important people in their lives. He'd make sure that Summer would have a wedding day that would live up to her dreams, and then after that... after that, the real fun would begin.

They'd get a nice place, somewhere in the city that was safe and a good place to raise kids in. One day she'd excitedly show him a little white stick with a couple of pink lines on it, and then he'd get to watch her belly go from flat and perfect to enormous and perfect. A son or a daughter would come at the end of those nine months - he wouldn't care which, so long as they were healthy and took more after their mother than their father - and life would never be the same.

After that, maybe more kids would come and maybe they wouldn't. They'd take life as it came and be happy with what they had and what they _didn't_ have. They'd always be friends first, partners in every sense of the word, and lovers who would know each other better than they knew themselves. They'd grow old together, and if they were lucky, they'd get to be the cool grandparents who gave their grandkids meals made of ice cream and candy and took them to the park every week.

He could see it all right _there_ , one potential path among countless others, and while it was incredibly early and far too premature to count on or even predict such a thing... he could see it. He could see a life like that with the woman lying next to him, and that was something that nearly sent him reeling because this kind of clarity had never happened to him before. _Ever_.

It gave him hope. Not just hope for his relationship with Summer, but hope for himself and his own future.

His thoughts were interrupted when she began to stir, taking a deep breath and rolling on her back. She kept her eyes closed, trying to chase a few more minutes of sleep, and he watched her for a bit until he decided to run his fingers down her arm again, knowing it wouldn't go unnoticed this time.

Her eyes fluttered open sleepily at the touch, quickly finding him lying next to her. She smiled and then closed her eyes again as he gently touched her face, running his fingers along her cheek. "So... yesterday _was_ real."

He smiled back. "Sure was, sweetheart."

Her eyes opened again, and this time she looked at him in that loving and sweet way of hers, like all of her many emotions were just simmering under the surface. "Hey... you called me sweetheart."

"I always call you that," he pointed out, still wearing a stubborn smile.

"Not in the morning," she replied, taking his hand in hers after his fingers had finished tracing her face. "Not when we're not... doing things."

 _God_ , he'd been such an idiot. But not anymore.

"Well... get used to hearing it a lot more often, _sweetheart_ ," he told her, watching her lips stretch in a smile so real and so happy that it made his heart ache in the best way possible. He kissed her softly then, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her close so that they could lay in the soft sunlight together and bask in the warmth that came with the start of their new chapter.

Anything could happen, and he knew that painfully well. But for his part, he was going to hold out hope for the path that he'd seen, the one that still felt like it was within their reach if they only chose to grasp it.

But he had a feeling. He had a hunch that they'd do it, and that their lives would go a lot like what he had envisioned. If they were lucky, that life and that family and that home would, in time, all be theirs.

And he was right.


End file.
